Signaux électriques des îlots pancréatiques enregistrés sur matrices de microélectrodes : caractérisation et application au phénotypage d'animaux transgéniques

摘要

Pancreatic β cells are central to glucose homeostasis because they are the only cell that secretes insulin, the sole hypoglycemic hormone in the organism. The β cell is a glucose sensor that regulates its secretory response and gene expression according to ambient glucose levels. The coupling between glucose metabolism and insulin granule exocytosis involves the generation of electrical activity. An investigation of this activity is important to decipher how β cells encode the organism’s insulin demand. In order to overcome the limits of classically used electrophysiological approaches that are not compatible with long-term studies, extracellular recordings using multielectrode arrays (MEA) have been set-up.My thesis aim was to better understand the complex signals recorded with MEA. This study revealed the existence of a new electrical signature of islet cells: slow potentials (SP) that reflect the coupling function of β cells. SP play an important role in glucose homeostasis and represent a biomarker of normal functioning of islets. The observed hysteretic response of islets to glucose suggests the existence of an algorithm encoding the insulin demand embedded at the microorgan level. Moreover, this new signal was used for the phenotyping of GluK2 deficient mouse islets that were employed as an α-to-β cell interaction model. The characterization of this new signal is an important progress in the development of a biosensor intended to be integrated in an artificial pancreas in the future.