The strange thing about writing about diabetes is that you put yourself at risk of really letting it take over your life. Things can get sort of meta — you’re living with diabetes, but then you’re also writing about living with it. (And in many cases you’re writing about how you don’t think it should take over your life.) Well, I just discovered a third level — a meta-meta-level, if you will: dreaming about diabetes. Yup. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night from a very vivid dream in...

Each T cell and each B cell has a different antigen receptor.  Collectively T cells and B cells are referred to as lymphocytes. How many lymphocytes do we have? The answer is between 100 million and 1 billion. Now, let’s do a bit of math. Antigen receptors are constructed from two proteins (we call them subunits when they combine to make a single structure). Each of the proteins is coded in DNA as a gene. The problem here is that we may have 1 billion different antigen receptors but we sure don’t have 1 billion genes. In point...

I have this compulsion to talk about the immune system. In part this is because it is grant season and I have been writing a lot about it in my latest grant proposal. It is such a beautiful and strange thing that I want to display some of that strangeness and beauty to you. Also, it is fundamental to understanding Type 1 diabetes and the efforts we are making towards finding a cure. Come to think of it, one part of the immune system – namely the part that produces inflammation is pretty important for type 2 diabetes as well as type...