Islet Neogenesis Associated Protein (INGAP) modulates gene expression in cultured neonatal rat islets

The Islet Neogenesis Associated Protein (INGAP) increases pancreatic β-cell mass and potentiates glucose-induced insulin secretion. We currently studied the effects of a pentadecapeptide having the 104–118 amino acid sequence of INGAP (INGAP-PP) on insulin secretion and on transcript profile expression in 4-day-cultured normal pancreatic neonatal rat islets. Islets cultured with INGAP-PP released significantly more insulin in response to 2.8 and 16.7 mM glucose than those cultured without the peptide. The macroarray analysis showed that 210 out of 2352 genes spotted in the nylon membranes were up-regulated while only 4 were down-regulated by INGAP-PP-treatment. The main categories of genes modified by INGAP-PP included several related with islet metabolism, insulin secretion mechanism, β-cell mass and islet neogenesis. RT-PCR confirmed the macroarray results for ten selected genes involved in growing, maturation, maintenance of pancreatic islet-cells, and exocytosis, i.e., Hepatocyte nuclear factor 3beta (HNF3β), Upstream stimulatory factor 1 (USF1), K +-channel proteins (SUR1 and Kir6.2), PHAS-I protein, Insulin 1 gene, Glucagon gene, Mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAP3K1), Amylin (IAPP), and SNAP-25. INGAP-PP also stimulated PDX-1 expression. The expression of three transcripts (HNF3β, SUR1, and SNAP-25) was confirmed by Western blotting for the corresponding proteins. In conclusion, our results show that INGAP-PP enhances specifically the secretion of insulin and the transcription of several islet genes, many of them directly or indirectly involved in the control of islet metabolism, β-cell mass and islet neogenesis. These results, together with other previously reported, strongly indicate an important role of INGAP-PP, and possibly of INGAP, in the regulation of islet function and development.