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" Emergent Phantom Bursting in Pancreatic Islets " The groundbreaking work of Banting and Best in the early twentieth century established that insulin, secreted from Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, is crucial for the proper handling of glucose in the body. Improper secretion or targeting of insulin can lead to diabetes, the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. We will discuss the mechanism for insulin secretion, focussing on the electrical activity of the beta-cells that make up an islet. These cells are similar in many ways to nerve cells, so there is considerable overlap in the mathematical and biophysical methods used to understand their behavior. The beta-cells form a large network via nearest-neighbor electrical coupling. We will discuss how this coupling shapes the electrical activity of the cells, converting continuous spiking activity into a bursting oscillation. An integral player in this conversion mechanism is a new bursting paradigm, which we call Phantom Bursting. We will discuss phantom bursting, and how electrical coupling allows it to emerge. |