Assessment of pancreatic beta-cell mass in a mouse model of beta-cell specific overexpression of the Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter (MCU)
The purpose of this project is to determine the effect MCU-overexpression has on 𝛃-cell mass. There has been research into the connection between obesity, diabetes, and higher MCU expression, but there has not been research into what the reduced insulin secretion in caused by when MCU has higher expression, 𝛃-cell mass or 𝛃-cell function. The results showed that in female mice there was not a significant decrease in 𝛃-cell mass, but the male mice had some trending data suggesting a decrease in 𝛃-cell mass. What we are doing currently is adding more samples to each male genotype to finalize the data.