Abstract: Objective To investigate the role of a potential diabetes-related mitochondrial region, w hich includes two previously reported mutations, 3243AG and 3316GA, in Chine se patients with adult-onset type 2 diabetes.Methods A total of 277 patients and 241 normal subjects were recruited for the study. M itochondrial nt 3116-3353, which spans the 16S rRNA, tRNAleu(UUR) and the NADH dehydrogenase 1 gene, were detected using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), direct DNA sequencing, PCR-restriction fragment length p olymorphism and allele-specific PCR. Variants were analyzed by two-tailed Fis her exact test. The function of the variants in 16S rRNA were predicted for mi nimal free energy secondary structures by RNA folding software mfold version 3.