Maturation of Adult β-Cells Revealed Using a Pdx1/Insulin Dual-Reporter Lentivirus
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The enigmatic process of beta-cell maturation has significant implications for diabetes pathogenesis, and potential diabetes therapies. This study examined the dynamics and heterogeneity of insulin and pancreatic duodenal homeobox (Pdx)-1 gene expression in adult beta-cells. Insulin and Pdx1 expression were monitored in human and mouse islet cells and MIN6 cells using a Pdx1-monomeric red fluorescent protein/insulin-enhanced green fluorescent protein dual-reporter lentivirus. The majority of fluorescent cells were highly positive for both Pdx1 and insulin. Cells expressing Pdx1 but little or no insulin (Pdx1(+)/Ins(low)) comprised 15-25% of the total population. Time-lapse imaging demonstrated that Pdx1(+)/Ins(low) primary beta-cells and MIN6 cells could convert to Pdx1(+)/Ins(+) cells without cell division. Genes involved in the mature beta-cell phenotype (Glut2, MafA) were expressed at higher levels in Pdx1(+)/Ins(+) cells relative to Pdx1(+)/Ins(low) cells. Conversely, genes implicated in early beta-cell development (MafB, Nkx2.2) were enriched in Pdx1(+)/Ins(low) cells. Sorted Pdx1(+)/Ins(low) MIN6 cells had a higher replication rate and secreted less insulin relative to double-positive cells. Long-term phenotype tracking of Pdx1(+)/Ins(low) cells showed two groups, one that matured into Pdx1(+)/Ins(+) cells and one that remained immature. These results demonstrate that adult beta-cells pass through distinct maturation states, which is consistent with previously observed heterogeneity in insulin and Pdx1 expression in adult beta-cells. At a given time, a proportion of adult beta-cells share similar characteristics to functionally immature embryonic beta-cell progenitors. The maturation of adult beta-cells recapitulates development in that Pdx1 expression precedes the robust expression of insulin and other mature beta-cell genes. These results have implications for harnessing the maturation process for therapeutic purposes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".