Islet heterogeneity and its impact upon hormone release

The past decade has seen explosive development in single cell screening and cell resolution imaging. These approaches have transformed our view of complex tissues such that cells deriving from the same progenitor pool, or expressing the same transcription factors, are now no longer considered to be entirely similar. The current presentation will describe recent work to understand functional heterogeneity in the pancreatic islets from the single cell to the single GPCR, and the impact of this on hormone release.

David is Professor of Cellular Metabolism and Deputy Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research, University of Birmingham, UK. David leads the Islet Biology Lab (https://www.isletbiologylab.com/), which develops novel tools and imaging approaches to understand how alpha, beta and delta cells, which reside within the islet, release hormone to maintain glucose homeostasis.