Approximately 70% of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have intrinsic insulin resistance (IR) above and beyond that associated with body mass, including dysfunctional glucose metabolism in adipose tissue (AT). In AT, analysis of the IRS/PI3-K/AKT pathway signaling components identified only GLUT4 expression to be significantly lower in PCOS patients and in control subjects with IR. We...

Previous studies have documented that streptozotocin-induced insulin deficiency results in a marked decrease in adipose tissue GLUT4 glucose transporter mRNA levels (Sivitz, W.I., DeSautel, S.L., Kayano, T., Bell, G.I., and Pessin, J.E. (1989) Nature 340, 72-74). In this study, nuclear run-on analysis performed on diabetic and insulin-treated diabetic rats demonstrated that the decrease in GLUT...

The glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) plays a key role in maintaining whole body glucose homeostasis. Tracking GLUT4 in space and time can provide new insights for understanding the mechanisms of insulin-regulated GLUT4 translocation. Organic dyes and fluorescent proteins were used in previous studies for investigating the traffic of GLUT4 in skeletal muscle cells and adipocytes. Because of their r...

Exercise induces a rapid increase in expression of the GLUT4 isoform of the glucose transporter in skeletal muscle. One of the signals responsible for this adaptation appears to be an increase in cytosolic Ca(2+). Myocyte enhancer factor 2A (MEF2A) is a transcription factor that is involved in the regulation of GLUT4 expression. It has been reported that the Ca(2+)-regulated phosphatase calcine...

To determine whether the increase in glucose uptake following AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation in adipocytes is mediated by accelerated GLUT4 translocation into plasma membrane, we constructed a chimera between GLUT4 and enhanced green fluorescent protein (GLUT4-eGFP) and transferred its cDNA into the nucleus of 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Then, the dynamics of GLUT4-eGFP translocation wer...

Insulin stimulates glucose transport in fat and skeletal muscle cells primarily by inducing the translocation of GLUT4 (glucose transporter isoform 4) to the PM (plasma membrane) from specialized GSVs (GLUT4 storage vesicles). Glycosphingolipids are components of membrane microdomains and are involved in insulin-regulated glucose transport. Cellular glycosphingolipids decrease during adipocyte ...

BACKGROUND Hypertension has been associated to diabetes, and participates in the development of diabetic complications. The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the gold standard model for the study of hypertension, and experimental diabetes has been currently investigated in SHR. Wistar-Kyoto rat is usually taken as control for SHR, however, regarding the glycemic homeostasis, WKY may be si...

Insulin stimulation of glucose transport in the major insulin-responsive tissues results predominantly from the translocation to the cell surface of a particular glucose transporter isoform, GLUT4, residing normally under basal conditions in intracellular vesicular structures. Recent studies have identified the presence of vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP) 2, a protein involved in vesi...

Ojuka, Edward O., Terry E. Jones, Lorraine A. Nolte, May Chen, Brian R. Wamhoff, Michael Sturek, and John O. Holloszy. Regulation of GLUT4 biogenesis in muscle: evidence for involvement of AMPK and Ca2 . Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 282: E1008–E1013, 2002; 10.1152/ ajpendo.00512.2001.—There is evidence suggesting that adaptive increases in GLUT4 and mitochondria in skeletal muscle occur in par...

Vesicle-associated membrane protein 2 (VAMP2) has been implicated in the insulin-regulated trafficking of GLUT4 in adipocytes. It has been proposed that VAMP2 co-localizes with GLUT4 in a postendocytic storage compartment (Martin, S., Tellam, J., Livingstone, C., Slot, J. W., Gould, G. W., and James, D. E. (1996) J. Cell Biol. 134, 625-635), suggesting that it may play a role distinct from endo...