Graduate Student Seminar with Luis Perez on Biophysics

Diabetes mellitus refers to a group of diseases that impact how your body uses sugar, specifically glucose, for cellular energy in the form of ATP. In healthy individuals, a feedback system between glucose and insulin, secreted by the pancreas, allows the body to maintain energetic homeostasis. The hormone-producing cells of the pancreas are known as the islet of Langerhans, where beta cells are responsible for insulin secretion. While the “consensus model’ for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) has been well established, the relationship between organelle biophysical properties and specific metabolic outputs has not been investigated. My aim is to use the mouse pancreatic beta cell (β-cell) line MIN6 to study how mitochondrial properties affect physiological processes in the context of diabetes. I plan on developing a mathematical model to predict how energy availability leads to ATP production and insulin secretion, and how these outputs depend on mitochondrial copy number and size. I also hope to compare this relationship between mitochondrial morphology and insulin secretion in isolated beta cells, versus in the interconnected system of the islet of Langerhans.