The bioenergetics of insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity:

how to discriminate between mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial adaptation

Dr Charles Affourtit is an Associate Professor (Reader) in Mitochondrial Biology at the School of Biomedical Science, University of Plymouth.

Type 2 diabetes is a pandemic metabolic disease characterised by impaired insulin secretion from pancreatic beta cells and by skeletal muscle and hepatic insulin resistance. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been associated with both obesity-related insulin secretion defects and loss of muscle insulin sensitivity, but the causality of the associations is controversial. Moreover, it is often hard to gauge if changes in mitochondrial function reflect true intrinsic defects, or arise in response to altered ATP demand. Using examples from our work with skeletal muscle and pancreatic beta cell models, I will argue that mitochondrial function is best evaluated in context of cellular energy expenditure

_{Affourtit, C. Alberts, B., Barlow, J., Carré, J. E. and Wynne, A. G. (2018) Control of pancreatic beta cell bioenergetics. Biochemical Society Transactions, https://doi.org/10.1042/BST20170505} 

_{Affourtit, C. (2016) Mitochondrial involvement in skeletal muscle insulin resistance - a case of imbalanced bioenergetics. BBA – Bioenergetics 1857, 1678-1693. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbabio.2016.07.008}