On the coherent behavior of pancreatic beta cell clusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pancreatic beta cell clusters synchronize their electrical activity to produce pulsatile insulin release, using a stochastic model and coherent state formalism to analyze their collective behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of coherent state formalism to model the phase transition-like synchronization in beta cell clusters.

Findings

Identification of scale-free self-similarity in voltage signals

Demonstration of coherent molecular domains formation

Linking cellular synchronization to phase transition phenomena

Abstract

Beta cells in pancreas represent an example of coupled biological oscillators which via communication pathways, are able to synchronize their electrical activity, giving rise to pulsatile insulin release. In this work we numerically analyze scale free self-similarity features of membrane voltage signal power density spectrum, through a stochastic dynamical model for beta cells in the islets of Langerhans fine tuned on mouse experimental data. Adopting the algebraic approach of coherent state formalism, we show how coherent molecular domains can arise from proper functional conditions leading to a parallelism with "phase transition" phenomena of field theory.