Rafael Arrojo E Drigo
Vanderbilt University, TN·Physiology
Type 2 diabetes develops when the body can no longer keep blood sugar in balance, and the risk rises with age. Beta cells in the pancreas make insulin and adjust how much they release as blood glucose and metabolic demands change.
- Fields
Physiology
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
beta cells
pancreatic islets
insulin
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Determine how calorie restriction, high-fat diet, aging and ER stress change beta cell epigenetic marks, gene activity, function and lifespan, using single-cell multiome sequencing and in vivo function measurements.
- Map the 3D spatial organization of the beta cell epigenome in place and relate it to cell-to-cell differences in gene activity, using high-resolution light and electron microscopy.
- Test whether calorie restriction increases beta cell identity and reduces ER stress to extend beta cell longevity, and whether this offsets identity loss in aging human beta cells, using stable-isotope microscopy among other methods.
More about the research
During aging and type 2 diabetes, beta cells come under stress and begin to lose their function and identity. Work by this group and others shows that aging beta cells carry chronic endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. The ER is the cell's protein-folding compartment, and this stress comes with impaired autophagy, the cell's recycling system. Reversing ER stress restores beta cell function. It remains unknown how differences among individual beta cells shift as they adapt to new demands.
Why it matters
Older adults and people with type 2 diabetes lose beta cell function as cells become stressed and lose their identity. Learning how beta cells adapt to diet and ER stress, and whether calorie restriction protects them, could reveal new ways to preserve or restore insulin-producing function in these patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Laura Alonso
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Physiology
Identify the causes of beta-cell dysfunction and glucose intolerance after 14 days of continuous ATF6 activation in living mice, using molecular, morphological and tissue-homeostasis experiments.
Samuel Stephens
University of Iowa, IA·Physiology
Establish how glucose metabolism in beta cells supplies reducing molecules that control the redox state of the endoplasmic reticulum, using imaging of proinsulin trafficking reporters in human and rodent diabetes models.
Yan Li
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Genetics
Map how gene activity changes, cell by cell, as 24 human pluripotent stem cell lines become beta cells, using pooled single-cell RNA sequencing that sorts cells back to their line of origin.
The school
Vanderbilt University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 494 research doctorates a year.
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