From the original article, a new hypothesis  by a team of researchers from Penn State University considered the cause of diabetes in new born babies as the lack of enzymes called Pancreatic Endoplasmic Reticulum Kinase (PERK) during the development in the pre-stages of birth. Diabetes is the inability to regulate glucose normally because the beta cells cannot produce enough insulin. Lack of that enzyme, according to the article, blocks the proliferation of beta cells and in turn inhibits the production of insulin. These beta cells are viewable with the use of binocular biological microscopes.

Based on their earlier discovery that mice deficient in PERK shows similarity to human sufferers, wherein diabetes is related to skeletal growth abnormalities, the research team experiment with PERK-deficient mice to discover how PERK affects the development and growth of beta cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin using binocular biological microscopes.

Beta cells, as seen in binocular biological microcopes, produce the precursor of insulin—proinsulin which in turn is assembled and modified into insulin that stimulates tissues to take up glucose and generate energy.

Significantly, the original article has described that laboratory mice deficient in PERK have only one half as much as of beta cells as that of normal ones, so that the other remaining cells do not produce the normal amount insulin.

The Cavener team, according to the original article, found that deficient mice actually produce new beta cells, although at a much lower rate than what is normal and it doubles after first few weeks, while normal mice produce it twenty fold. Other hypothesis is that in deficient mice 30 to 40% of beta cells are abnormal because the proinsulin is found elsewhere instead of in or around the nucleus. And they do not develop in clusters within pancreas when viewed under binocular biological microscopes, thus they do not secret insulin.

The Cavener Team also found through the use of binocular biological microcopes that PERK must be expressed at critical periods during the process of development if beta cells are to regulate glucose normally for the rest of the animal life.

The results of the study made by the Cavener Team can help in making new medications and other medical breakthroughs among diabetes patients. Medical microscopes such as the binocular biological microscope are tools that could help in processing and analyzing specimens and tissue cultures.