Pancreatic α-cells are functionally heterogeneous and sex-dependently regulated by neighboring endocrine cells
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Glucose and paracrine regulation of α-cells, particularly with respect to sex differences, is still poorly understood. Here, we imaged islets from GluCre:GCaMP6f mice in pancreatic slices, additionally loaded with a red Ca²⁺ indicator, to precisely interrogate Ca²⁺ dynamics in α-cells and the adjacent β- and δ-cells. During a glucose ramp (1.8-10.8 mM), α-cell Ca²⁺ oscillations were heterogeneous, antiphasic to β-cells, and inversely correlated with δ-cells. Selective inhibition of insulin receptor (InsR) and somatostatin receptor subtypes-2 and 3 (SSTR2/3) shifted the majority of α-cells to hyperactivity, delayed the decline of α-cell activity and onset of β-cell Ca²⁺ oscillations during the ramp. While female α-cells exhibited greater sensitivity to SSTR2/3 inhibition, male α-cells were more responsive to InsR blockade. Under complete SSTR2/3 and InsR antagonism, α-cells exhibited elevated Ca²⁺ oscillations but remained glucose-dependent. We conclude that intra-islet coordination fine-tunes α-cell glucose responses, with sex-specific paracrine signaling potentially shaping glucagon profiles in metabolic disease.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| 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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".