Metabolic control of insulin secretion in islets of Langerhans from mice submitted to experimental protein malnourishment and obesity

Abstract

Epidemiological data shows obesity and type 2 diabetes burst in developing countries and its relationship with imbalanced diet consumption throughout life span. Insulin secretion impairment is pointed as one of the main alterations related with the incidence of these diseases. Our group has shown several diet-induced molecular and functional effects upon insulin secretion mechanism in protein malnutrition and obesity models. Our hypothesis is that changes in Metabolic Coupling Factors production such as; NADPH, malonyl-CoA, glutamate, etc., could be an additional mechanism to explain impaired insulin secretion in these models. Therefore, our objective is to investigate molecular and functional mechanisms involved with the metabolic control of stimulus/secretion coupling in islets from protein malnourished mice followed by a high fat diet-induced obesity. In addition, this project would also allow the establishment of new methodologies still not employed in the routine of our laboratory. (AU)