The pancreatic β-cell transcriptome and integrated-omics.

Purpose Of Review: β Cells represent one of many cell types in heterogeneous pancreatic islets and play the central role in maintaining glucose homeostasis, such that disrupting β-cell function leads to diabetes. This review summarizes the methods for isolating and characterizing β cells, and describes integrated 'omics' approaches used to define the β cell by its transcriptome and proteome.

Recent Findings: RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry-based protein identification have now identified RNA and protein profiles for mouse and human pancreatic islets and β cells, and for β-cell lines. Recent publications have outlined these profiles and, more importantly, have begun to assign the presence or absence of specific genes and regulatory molecules to β-cell function and dysfunction. Overall, researchers have focused on understanding the pathophysiology of diabetes by connecting genome, transcriptome, proteome, and regulatory RNA profiles with findings from genome-wide association studies.

Summary: Studies employing these relatively new techniques promise to identify specific genes or regulatory RNAs with altered expression as β-cell function begins to deteriorate in the spiral toward the development of diabetes. The ultimate goal is to identify the potential therapeutic targets to prevent β-cell dysfunction and thereby better treat the individual with diabetes.

Video Abstract: http://links.lww.com/COE/A5.