Speakers
Description
The activity of insulin-secreting beta-cells within pancreatic islets of Langerhans is oscillatory, with a period of approximately 5 min. There are hundreds of islets in the mouse pancreas and hundreds of thousands in the human pancreas, and they are physically isolated from one another. Yet somehow that exhibit a great deal of synchrony. In addition, there is often an ultradian rhythm in blood insulin levels, with a period close to one hour. How does the islet synchrony occur? What is the mechanism for the ultradian rhythm? We will present a unified explanation for both the synchronozation of the fast oscillations and the generation of the slow ultradian rhythm. This explanation is explored using computer simulations and a reduced mathematical model, and tested using a hybrid approach utilizing islets studied in a microfluidic device.
