Bioinformatics and gene expression microarrays (GEM) will be applied to gain insight into the molecular pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes. The simultaneous monitoring of thousands of genes in parallel can identify novel genes and entire biochemical pathways that are dysregulated at the transcriptional level. Affymetrix Inc. chips or spotted arrays will be applied as DNA microarray tools. Bioinformatic software programs and databases will be employed as data mining tools in order to perform statistical analysis, cluster analysis and biochemical pathway analysis.