Presenter: Kelson Knighton
Authors: Kelson Knighton
Faculty Advisor: Jeffery Tessem
Institution: Brigham Young University
Today over 460 million people have diabetes with the majority suffering from type 2 diabetes (T2D). Metabolic stress, such as glucolipotoxicity, drive the development of T2D. Loss of functional β-cell mass due to these stressors is essential to the pathogenesis of diabetes. There are multiple gene expression changes that occur from these stressors. Studying this genetic variation in β-cells can lead to a greater understanding of diabetes and lead to potential cures. CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful tool for creating gene knockouts to study heterogeneity. We created a CRISPR guide-RNA library for the rat pancreatic islet β-cell insulinoma (INS-1) cell line. This library will be used to perform genome-wide forward genetic screens under conditions of glucolipotoxicity, proliferation, and insulin secretion of all expressed genes in the INS-1 cell line. Here we present the state of our guide-RNA library development and forward progressive screens.