2 research outputs found
Glucose metabolism and oscillatory behavior of pancreatic islets
A variety of oscillations are observed in pancreatic islets.We establish a
model, incorporating two oscillatory systems of different time scales: One is
the well-known bursting model in pancreatic beta-cells and the other is the
glucose-insulin feedback model which considers direct and indirect feedback of
secreted insulin. These two are coupled to interact with each other in the
combined model, and two basic assumptions are made on the basis of biological
observations: The conductance g_{K(ATP)} for the ATP-dependent potassium
current is a decreasing function of the glucose concentration whereas the
insulin secretion rate is given by a function of the intracellular calcium
concentration. Obtained via extensive numerical simulations are complex
oscillations including clusters of bursts, slow and fast calcium oscillations,
and so on. We also consider how the intracellular glucose concentration depends
upon the extracellular glucose concentration, and examine the inhibitory
effects of insulin.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figure