Christopher B. Newgard

Molecular Engineering of Glucose-Regulated Insulin Secretion

Rapid advances in the technology of gene transfer into mammalian cells have been made in recent years. These improvements in methodology have allowed investigators to begin to use molecular strategies for testing hypotheses about the role of certain genes in the process of fuel-mediated insulin release (1). To this point, most of the work has focused on genes that regulate the acute insulin secretory response to glucose. Interest in the glucose response is naturally motivated by the fact that its loss is an early event in the etiology of both major forms of diabetes (2,3). In this chapter, recent studies employing molecular approaches for dissecting the relative contributions of glucose transport and glucose phosphorylation in the control of glucose-stimulated insulin release will be reviewed.