Chapter category: Endocrine

Insulin Action Gene Regulation

This chapter appears in the following book:

Mechanisms of Insulin Action

Edited by: Alan R. Saltiel and Jeffrey E. Pessin
ISBN: 978-0-387-72203-0
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «

Chapter authors:
Calum Sutherland, Richard M. O'Brien and Daryl K. Granner

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Insulin regulates metabolism by altering the concentration of critical proteins or by inducing post-translational modifications of preexisting molecules. The latter represents a well-recognized action of insulin, and it has been extensively studied for many years. By contrast, it is only recently that considerable advances have been made in understanding several aspects of insulin-regulated gene expression. Although insulin could potentially affect any of the multiple steps in the flow of information from gene to protein, it appears that transcription, mRNA stability and translation represent the primary sites of insulin action. This chapter will principally focus on insulin-regulated gene transcription. It is now clear that insulin can have positive and negative effects on the transcription of specific genes within the same cell. In addition, the genes regulated by insulin encode proteins involved in a variety of biologic phenomena (Fig. 1). Many, but not all, of these mRNAs direct the synthesis of enzymes that have a well-established metabolic connection to insulin action (Fig. 1). Not unexpectedly, this type of regulation is mostly seen in the primary tissues associated with the metabolic actions of insulin namely liver, muscle and adipose tissue but insulin also regulates gene expression in tissues not commonly associated with metabolic effects.

Calum Sutherland

Richard M. O'Brien
Biomedical Diagnostics & Research, Inc.

Daryl K. Granner
Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics

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Chapter category: Endocrine

Insulin Action Gene Regulation

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