Discovery of novel glucose-regulated proteins in isolated human pancreatic islets using LC-MS/MS-based proteomics
The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is increasing dramatically throughout the world, and the disease has become a major public health issue. The most common form of the disease, type 2 diabetes, is due in part to insufficient insulin production from the pancreatic beta-cell. Since glucose is the most potent and physiologically important regulators of beta-cell function under physiological conditions, understanding the insulin secretory defect underlying type 2 diabetes requires a better understanding of glucose regulation of beta-cell function. To this aim, a bottom-up LC-MS/MS-based proteomics approach was used to profile pooled islets from multiple donors under basal (5 mM) or high (15 mM) glucose conditions. Our analysis discovered 256 differentially abundant proteins ({approx}p < 0.05) after 24 h of high glucose exposure from more than 4500 identified in total. Several novel glucose-regulated proteins were elevated under high glucose conditions, including regulators of mRNA splicing (Pleiotropic regulator 1), processing (Retinoblastoma binding protein 6), and function (Nuclear RNA export factor 1), in addition to Neuron navigator 1 and Plasminogen activator inhibitor 1. Proteins whose abundances markedly decreased during incubation at 15 mM glucose included Bax inhibitor 1 and Synaptotagmin-17. Many proteins found to be differentially abundant after high glucose stimulation were uncharacterized or hypothetical. These findings expand our knowledge of glucose regulation of the human islet proteome and suggest many hitherto unknown responses to glucose that require additional studies to explore novel functional roles.