Elastic fibers are major components of ECM, providing tissues with resilience and elastic recoil. They consist of the insoluble elastin made of cross-linked precursor tropoelastin monomers and the microfibrillar scaffold.
Various connective tissue disorders have been linked to elastic fiber malformation. In addition, it has been shown that decreased vascular elastin contents correlate with the rapid progression of atherosclerosis in patients with diabetes mellitus. However, it is unknown whether insulin can directly modulate elastogenesis. This question was addressed in this thesis.
Our study revealed that insulin stimulated elastogenesis in cultures of human aortic SMCs and skin fibroblasts, and that this effect of insulin was transduced through the insulin receptor. We found that insulin might initiate elastin gene expression and enhance tropoelastin secretion. We also presented novel preliminary data indicating that Glut10 might bind to a fraction of intracellular tropoelastin, and that insulin might modulate the association between these two proteins.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/32923 |
| Date | 04 September 2012 |
| Creators | Shi, Junyan Jr. |
| Contributors | Hinek, Aleksander |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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