Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Investigating How Calcium Diffusion Affects Metabolic Oscillations And Synchronization Of Pancreatic Beta Cells, George Eskandar, Jennifer Houser, Ellen Prochaska, Jessica Wojtkiewicz, Teresa Lebair, Bradford E. Peercy, Margaret Watts, Arthur Sherman

Spora: A Journal of Biomathematics

Diabetes is a disease characterized by improper concentrations of blood glucose due to irregular insulin production or sensitivity. Coupled in islets of Langerhans within the pancreas, β-cells are responsible for the production and regulation of insulin based on changes in glucose levels. Using the Dual Oscillator Model (DOM), we will examine how calcium handling between individual pancreatic β-cells affects the synchronization of metabolic oscillations within electrically coupled islets. Calcium permeability was implemented into the DOM, and numerical solutions of the system were obtained via MATLAB using a modified ordinary differential equation solver for stiff systems and the Automatic Differentiation for …