Novel Observations from Next Generation RNA Sequencing of Highly Purified Human Adult and Fetal Islet Cell Subsets

Understanding distinct gene expression patterns of normal adult and developing fetal human pancreatic a and b cells is crucial for developing stem cell therapies, islet regeneration strategies, and therapies designed to increase b cell function in patients with diabetes (type 1 or 2). Toward that end, we have developed methods to highly purify a, b, and d cells from human fetal and adult pancreata by intracellular staining for the cell-specific hormone content, sorting the sub-populations by flow cytometry and, using next generation RNA sequencing, we report on the detailed transcriptomes of fetal and adult a and b cells. We observed that human islet composition was not influenced by age, gender, or body mass index and transcripts for inflammatory gene products were noted in fetal b cells. In addition, within highly purified adult glucagon-expressing a cells, we observed surprisingly high insulin mRNA expression, but not insulin protein expression. This transcriptome analysis from highly purified islet a and b cell subsets from fetal and adult pancreata offers clear implications for strategies that seek to increase insulin expression in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Overall design: RNA-sequencing of highly purified human adult and fetal islet cell subset was performed using our newly developed method. Using this data, we can study and compare the detailed transcriptome or alpha and beta cells during development.

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Blodgett DM, Nowosielska A, Afik S, Pechhold S, Cura AJ, Kennedy NJ, Kim S, Kucukural A, Davis RJ, Kent SC, Greiner DL, Garber MG, Harlan DM, diIorio P