Mouse pancreatic islets during pregnancy

During pregnancy, pancreatic islets undergo structural and functional changes that lead to enhance insulin release in response to increased insulin demand, which is rapidly reversed at parturition. One of the most important changes is expansion of pancreatic β-cell mass mainly by increased proliferation of β cells. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression and identified distinct up- or down-regulated genes during pregnancy. Maternal islet were isolated from mice at dpc 0 and 12.5 dpc of pregnancy for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We sought to identify the responsible factors for the proliferation of islets during pregnancy.