Metabolic regulation of insulin secretion

Abstract

Understanding fuel-induced insulin-secretion cascades is essential to assessing beta-cell pathology in diabetes. Such understanding may pave the way for more effective therapies to treat or prevent diabetes and to maintain islets or surrogate beta cells for transplantation. Metabolic regulation of insulin secretion requires signals reflective of the metabolic state. Signals generally require large rapid changes of limited duration, competitive opposing signals, or ability to translocate. Here we will discuss the metabolic origin and consequences of the following putative metabolic signals that each exhibit such attributes: the adenosine triphosphate/adenosine diphosphate (ATP/ADP) ratio (competitive opposition), malonyl CoA (rapid transient)/long chain acyl CoA (LC-CoA) (competitive opposition, translocation), the redox state (competitive opposition), and the role of oscillations (rapid transient). © 2008 Springer.