Seeing mouse islets everywhere
Almost a decade ago, Manami Hara published a wonderful series of papers about species differences in the cell composition and...
Visualizing Insulin Granule Secretion
To secrete insulin is what beta cells are made for. To do so, beta cells store insulin in granules that are released upon stimulation....
Living Pancreatic Tissue Slices – A Versatile Tool to Study Islets in their Native Environment
Stephan Speier and Marjan Rupnik developed the pancreas slice technique over a decade ago. In 2016, we implemented this technique in our...
Beta cells secrete serotonin to inhibit alpha cells
Serotonin has been around for a while as a paracrine signal in the islet. Recent studies point to a role of serotonin mainly, if not...
Localizing mRNA expression in the pancreatic islet with in situ hybridization
Many laboratories are studying the expression of genes in the pancreatic islet to understand what goes wrong during the development of...