People who have diabetes don’t have enough pancreatic beta cells in order to produce the insulin needed to regulate the blood sugar level. Now, the researchers from the UCLA’s L Hillblom Islet Research Center discovered the essential means that can convert the other cells in the body into a insulin making cells that can give a potential diabetes cure.
The recent standard for the treatment of diabetes insulin therapy able to help those patients to maintain the level of sugar, it is still not perfect and for that, many patients remain at risk in developing medical complications.
Refilling lost beta cells might provide as a supplementary eternal result, mutually for those who have lost such cells due to an immune attack, Type 1 diabetes, and those who obtain diabetes later in life due to insulin resistance, Type 2.
According to the study co-author Anil Bhushan, an associate professor of medicine in the endocrinology division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA their work shows that the beta cells and the related endocrine cells can be easily converted into each other.
Researchers showed the methyl groups, the chemical tags that bind the DNA, works as a volume knob that turns the activity of the certain genes up or down and it is a crucial understanding on how the cells will be able to convert into an insulin-secreting beta cells.
“They showed that DNA methylation keeps ARX, a gene that triggers the formation of glucagon-secreting alpha cells in the embryonic pancreas, silent in beta cells. Deletion of Dnmt1, the enzyme responsible for DNA methylation, from insulin-producing beta cells converts them into alpha cells.” http://www.zeenews.com/news703272.html
“The findings suggested that a defect in beta cells” DNA methylation process interferes with their ability to maintain their “identity.” So if this “epigenetic mechanism,” as the researchers call it, can produce alpha cells, there may be an analogous mechanism that can produce beta cells that would maintain blood sugar equilibrium.” http://www.zeenews.com/news703272.html
Bhushan added that they have shown that the basis for the conversion depends not only on the genetic sequence but more on the modifications to the DNA that states on how the DNA is wrapped within the cells. They think that it is crucial to understand on the conversion of a variety of cell types which includes stem cells into function beta cells. Study was published in the April issue of the journal Developmental Cell.
