Quantifying granule transport and controlling calcium oscillations in insulin secreting beta cells

Insulin secreting beta-cells are a very complicated biological system in which various cellular components coordinate many cellular processes and communication between different cell types. There is a long history of experimental and theoretical research which helped establish the current understanding of the system (i.e. insulin secretion beta-cells) in great detail. What is absent from this rich literature is an understanding of how cooperativity of these various mechanisms affect the overall function of the system. How glucose plays a leading role in the tight control of the stimulatory and inhibitory factors in the beta cells remains to be completely understood. Additionally, it is rather difficult to predict how the system will behave in different physiological environments.;In our research, we applied tools commonly used in chemistry, such as correlation function analysis and probability distribution functions to quantify the functions of the cells. We aim to better understand the molecular dynamics underlying insulin secretion in pancreatic beta-cells by quantifying the dynamics accurately using Segmented Spatio-Temporal Image Correlation Spectroscopy and additional quantitative tools originating from financial mathematics. These analytical tools resulted in a better understanding of the various transport dynamics that were hidden when analyzed with traditional analysis. We also designed chemical perturbation measurements to entrain or control the calcium oscillations in insulin secreting cells.