Globally phase-locked α and β cells
On June 28th, 2022, we released paper « pancreatic α and β cells are globally phase-locked» in Nature Communications（doi:10.1038/s41467-022-31373-6）. The Ca2+ modulated pulsatile secretion of glucagon and insulin by pancreatic α and β cells plays a key role in glucose homeostasis. However, how α and β cells coordinate via paracrine interaction to produce various Ca2+ oscillation patterns is still elusive. To address this question, we combined microfluidic device, α and β cells specific labeled transgenic mice, fluorescence imaging and mathematical modelling. We found the oscillations of α and β cells were globally phase-locked. And the activation of α cells displayed a fixed time delay of ~20 s to that of β cells, β cells activated with a tunable delay after the α cells. As a result, the tunable phase shift between α and β cells set the islet oscillation period and pattern in both the model and experiments. Our study highlights the importance of paracrine interaction to generate various islet oscillation patterns. Huixia Ren, Yanjun Li, Chengsheng Han, and Yi Yu mainly contributed to the work. Prof. Chao Tang and Prof. Liangyi Chen supervised the study.