Calendar Overview

Zooming in on Diabetes Thursday, March 4 at 9:00 am (PST)

Presenter: Dr. Jelena Kolic, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Johnson Lab, Life Sciences Institute, UBC Vancouver

Title of Paper: Combinatorial transcription factor profiles predict mature and functional human islet α and β cells

Abstract:

Islet-enriched transcription factors (TFs) exert broad control over cellular processes in pancreatic α and β cells and changes in their expression are associated with developmentalstate and diabetes. However, the implications of heterogeneity in TF expression across islet cellpopulations are not well understood. To define this TF heterogeneity and its consequences forcellular function, we profiled >40,000 cells from normal human islets by scRNA-seq andstratified α and β cells based on combinatorial TF expression. Subpopulations of islet cells coexpressing ARX/MAFB (α cells) and MAFA/MAFB (β cells) exhibited greater expression of keygenes related to glucose sensing and hormone secretion relative to subpopulations expressingonly one or neither TF. Moreover, all subpopulations were identified in native pancreatic tissuefrom multiple donors. By Patch-seq, MAFA/MAFB co-expressing β cells showed enhancedelectrophysiological activity. Thus, these results indicate combinatorial TF expression in islet αand β cells predicts highly functional, mature subpopulations.

PMID  none yet. This is a pre-print.

URL link to publication source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432522v1

“Zooming in on Diabetes” is a virtual journal club and was launched in March 2020.

It is a joint initiative across the University of British Columbia campuses including the Life Sciences Centre and the BC Children’s Hospital.

This Journal Club is designed for trainees to develop skills in critical evaluation of recent articles in the scientific literature related to diabetes research.

The intended audience are academic research trainees and faculty involved in diabetes research in British Columbia, Canada.

The journal club is held on Tuesdays and Thursdays via ZOOM.