Mouse Pancreatic Islet Maturation Time Series

Beta cells are the sole source of insulin in our body, yet we do not understand how they mature into fully functional, glucose-responsive beta cells. We generated transcriptomes of FACS-purified beta cells using the Ins1-H2b-mCherry reporter line (Jax # 028589) at different peri- and postnatal maturation stages. This enables a systematic comparison across thousands of genes as beta cells mature. Breeders homozygous for Ins1-H2b-mCherry (Jax #028589) were crossed to wild type C57bl6 mates to ensure offspring were uniformly hemizygous for the mCherry reporter. Islets from single litters (a mix of male and female is expected) were pooled for each sample to obtain sufficient material. Pooled islets were dissociated, sorted and collect in Trizol for RNA isolation and library construction. Each time point was collected in the morning and FACS-sorted at the conclusion of the islet prep the same day. Each time point was done in duplicate or triplicate.