Kinetics and genomic profiling of adult human and mouse β-cell maturation

Diabetes is a multifactorial metabolic disorder defined by the loss of functional pancreatic insulin-producing β-cells. The functional maturation and dedifferentiation of adult β-cells is central to diabetes pathogenesis and to β-cell replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes. Despite its importance, the dynamics and mechanisms of adult β-cell maturation remain poorly understood. Using a novel Pdx1/Ins1 dual fluorescent reporter lentiviral vector, we previously found that individual adult human and mouse β-cells exist in at least two differentiation states distinguishable by the activation of the rat Ins1 promoter and performed the first real-time imaging of the maturation of individual cultured β-cells. Our previous study focused on transformed (MIN6) β-cells as a model to investigatethe kinetics of β-cell maturation. In the present study, we investigated the kinetics of the maturation process in primary human and mouse β-cells and performed gene expression profiling. Gene expression profiling of FACS purified immature Pdx1 (+) /Ins1 (low) cells and mature Pdx1 (high) /Ins1 (high ) cells from cultures of human islets, mouse islets and MIN6 cells revealed that Pdx1 (+) /Ins1 (low) cells are enriched for multiple genes associated with β-cell development/progenitor cells, proliferation, apoptosis, as well as genes coding for other islet cell hormones such as glucagon. We also demonstrated that the heterogeneity in β-cell maturation states previously observed in vitro, can also be found in vivo. Collectively, these experiments contribute to the understanding of maturation, dedifferentiation and plasticity of adult pancreatic β-cells. The results have significant implications for islet regeneration and for in vitro generation of functional β-cells to treat diabetes.