Mitochondria play an important role in many processes, like glucose metabolism, fatty acid oxidation and ATP synthesis. In this study, we aimed to identify association of common polymorphisms in nuclear-encoded genes involved in mitochondrial protein synthesis and biogenesis with type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM) using a two-stage design. In the first stage, we analyzed 62 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the Hoorn study (n=999 participants) covering all common variation in 13 biological candidate genes. These 13 candidate genes were selected from four clusters regarded essential for correct mitochondrial protein synthesis and biogenesis: aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, translation initiation factors, tRNA modifying enzymes and mitochondrial DNA transcription and replication. SNPs showing evidence for association with T2DM were measured in second stage genotyping (n=10164 participants). After a meta-analysis, only one SNP in SIRT4 (rs2522138) remained significant (P=0.01). Extending the second stage with samples from the Danish Steno Study (n=1220 participants) resulted in a common odds ratio (OR) of 0.92 (0.85-1.00), P=0.06. Moreover, in a large meta-analysis of three genome-wide association studies, this SNP was also not associated with T2DM (P=0.72). In conclusion, we did not find evidence for association of common variants in 13 nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins with T2DM.European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication, 11 February 2009; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.4.