Regulation of insulin preRNA splicing by glucose

摘要

Glucose tightly regulates the synthesis and secretion of insulin by β cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. To investigate whether glucose regulates insu- lin synthesis at the level of insulin RNA splicing, we devel- oped a method to detect and quantify a small amount of RNA by using the branched DNA (bDNA) signal-amplification technique. This assay is both sensitive and highly specific: mouse insulin II mRNA can be detected from a single β cell (βTC3 cells or mouse islets), whereas 1 million non-insulin- producing α cells (αTC1.6 cells) give no signal.