Modeling the Effects of Fatty Acids in Insulin Secretion, Insulin Resistance, and Islet Cell Dysfunction (Cinar, Opara)
Free fatty acids (FFA) in blood play important roles in muscle, heart, liver, and pancreas. Elevated FFA concentrations cause insulin resistance in liver and muscles. Elevated FFA and intracellular lipid concentration are the primary suspects for inhibiting insulin signaling, causing reduction in insulin-translocation, and suppression of glucose transport. Elevated FFA levels in the liver promote hyperglycaemia. Increases in FFA are responsible for altering insulin secretion in pancreatic islet cells. Research is concentrated on development and application of systems biology, network analysis, and systems science techniques for constructing the metabolic pathways and networks for modeling these phenomena based on data available in the literature. Systems science and network analysis techniques are used to hypothesize detailed networks that need to be experimentally investigated by our medical and clinical collaborators.