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Beta-cell simulation and clinical studies on insulin secretion
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 107 (2011) iii
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pbiomolbio
Editorial
Beta-cell simulation and clinical studies on insulin secretion
The growing social needs for medical care of metabolic syndrome have encouraged the research field of pancreatic insulin secretion. The application of the patch clamp technique to isolated b cells or related cell lines revealed functional details of many kinds of ion channels and transporters to explain the membrane excitation. The dynamic changes in intracellular concentrations and/or distribution of key molecules, involved in the signal transduction in the b cells, have been measured in detail by development of different kinds of molecular probes. The development of the optical imaging technique provided us direct visualization of insulin vesicular release from the intact cells. The studies on the structure–functional relationship of proteins provided far better understanding of the enzyme reactions supporting the metabolic pathways in plasma membrane, cytoplasm and mitochondria, which is involved in determining the signal transduction of glucose concentration into the electrical signal to initiate the intracellular Ca2þ dynamics. Thus, our scientific knowledge on individual functional units has been largely expanded by these recent investigations. Researchers are now prompted to integrate the scientific knowledge in clarifying the systemic behaviour of the pancreatic b cell or islet. One
0079-6107/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/S0079-6107(11)00143-X
of such method has been well established by the mathematical physiology or computational cell biology, which has so far proposed beautiful principal mechanisms for the complex electrical behaviour of the b cells by developing a simple model of membrane excitation composed of idealized ion channel behaviour. The model is now much extended into complex but realistic cell models based on the broad range of experimental findings, and can visualize cell responses to varying glucose concentrations on the computer graphics. We are now convinced that the role of individual molecules can be discussed using mathematical tools in relation to the final insulin release by developing the b cell models. This focused issue of PBMB was proposed on the occasion of an international symposium on ‘the modelling of b cells and energy metabolism’ held in Kyoto, Japan, which aimed at encouraging collaboration between modellers and experimentalist, which is the key issue for further development. Guest Editors for the focused issue. Yung E. Earm, Seoul Nobuya Inagaki, Kyoto Akinori Noma, Kyoto
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pbiomolbio
Editorial
Beta-cell simulation and clinical studies on insulin secretion
The growing social needs for medical care of metabolic syndrome have encouraged the research field of pancreatic insulin secretion. The application of the patch clamp technique to isolated b cells or related cell lines revealed functional details of many kinds of ion channels and transporters to explain the membrane excitation. The dynamic changes in intracellular concentrations and/or distribution of key molecules, involved in the signal transduction in the b cells, have been measured in detail by development of different kinds of molecular probes. The development of the optical imaging technique provided us direct visualization of insulin vesicular release from the intact cells. The studies on the structure–functional relationship of proteins provided far better understanding of the enzyme reactions supporting the metabolic pathways in plasma membrane, cytoplasm and mitochondria, which is involved in determining the signal transduction of glucose concentration into the electrical signal to initiate the intracellular Ca2þ dynamics. Thus, our scientific knowledge on individual functional units has been largely expanded by these recent investigations. Researchers are now prompted to integrate the scientific knowledge in clarifying the systemic behaviour of the pancreatic b cell or islet. One
0079-6107/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/S0079-6107(11)00143-X
of such method has been well established by the mathematical physiology or computational cell biology, which has so far proposed beautiful principal mechanisms for the complex electrical behaviour of the b cells by developing a simple model of membrane excitation composed of idealized ion channel behaviour. The model is now much extended into complex but realistic cell models based on the broad range of experimental findings, and can visualize cell responses to varying glucose concentrations on the computer graphics. We are now convinced that the role of individual molecules can be discussed using mathematical tools in relation to the final insulin release by developing the b cell models. This focused issue of PBMB was proposed on the occasion of an international symposium on ‘the modelling of b cells and energy metabolism’ held in Kyoto, Japan, which aimed at encouraging collaboration between modellers and experimentalist, which is the key issue for further development. Guest Editors for the focused issue. Yung E. Earm, Seoul Nobuya Inagaki, Kyoto Akinori Noma, Kyoto