Abstract
Insulin and glucagon are the hormonal polypeptides secreted by the B and A cells of the endocrine pancreas, respectively. Their major physiologic effects are regulation of carbohydrate metabolism, but they have opposite effects. Insulin and glucagon have various physiologic roles, in addition to the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism. The physiologic effects of insulin and glucagon on the cell are initiated by the binding of each hormone to receptors on the target cells. Morphologic studies may be useful for relating biochemical, physiologic, and pharmacologic information on the receptors to an anatomic background. Receptor radioautography techniques using radioligands to label specific insulin and glucagon receptors have been successfully applied to many tissues and organs. In this review, current knowledge of the histologic distribution of insulin and glucagon receptors is presented with a brief description of receptor radioautography techniques.
Highlights
Insulin is a hormone secreted by B cells, and glucagon is secreted by A cells of the pancreas
Methods for investigating the histologic distribution of receptors. Both immunohistochemistry and radioautography can be used to investigate the distribution of insulin and glucagon receptors, we focus here on the radioautographic technique [47]
We have investigated the histologic distribution of the receptors in young, adult and pregnant mice using whole body and light microscopic radioautography with 125I-labeled glucagon
Summary
Insulin is a hormone secreted by B cells, and glucagon is secreted by A cells of the pancreas. The two hormones play an important role in carbohydrate metabolism. Insulin and glucagon have various physiologic roles in addition to the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism. The physiologic effects of insulin and glucagon on the cell are initiated by the binding of each hormone to target cell receptors. Physiologic, and pharmacologic information on receptors to an anatomic background, morphologic studies might be important, microdissection techniques allow the determination of receptor levels in tissues as small as 200 to 500 μm in diameter [1,2]. The insulin and glucagon receptors will be described with emphasis on the histological tissue distribution of these receptors from macroscopic to light microscopic levels determined mainly with the radioautographic technique. The fundamental procedure of macro- and microradioautography for peptide hormone receptors will be described
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