Diabetes has become one of the rising diseases both nationwide and worldwide. In the United States, 9.3% of the total population has diabetes as of 2012 (CDC, 2014). There are two types of diabetes, Type I and Type II. Type II diabetes is the most common form of diabetes to be diagnosed (ADA, 2013). The rising death rates of diabetes each year has caused it to be the seventh leading cause of death in the United States as of 2010. This has brought attention towards working in finding molecular mechanisms to understand diabetes through various cell lines, such as pancreatic islets.

 

In Type II diabetes, the pancreatic beta cell (β-cell) is unable to secrete insulin, the hormone secreted after a meal to regulate glucose concentrations wihtin the blood. If unable to secrete insulin and control glucose concentrations, pateients can fall into a state of hyperglycemia. Micro RNAs (miRNA) are small sequences of RNA that can inhibit trancriptional expression. We focus on micro RNA 375 (miR-375), which is known to inhibit pancreatic β-cell insulin secretion. In pancreatic alpha cells(α-cell) it is unknown what effect miR-375 has on α-cell development and hormone secretion at a transcriptional level.