Marjan Slak Rupnik

Biography

Teaching medical physiology for many years is an extremely rewarding experience. With a side effect. One gets aware how ignorant people want to stay, even if their health or their quality of life is at stake. I admit that some facts should be put in a simpler way to be understood by people that my be a bit less curious about what is going on within their bodies. Many people get motivated by the disease. But let us try to make a step further... The series of posts will list a selection of simple facts about the metabolism of nutrients like glucose, proteins and fats in our bodies. I will strive to translate scientific knowledge into a nonprofessional language, simple tables and simple drawings. One of the major focuses shall be a disease which everybody calls diabetes. Some of the facts may be surprising, they may appear different from a common belief, but they should make you observe, think, discuss, reconsider. Research Our laboratory pioneered in pancreas tissue slices approach to study the function of insulin-secreting beta cells in adult (Speier and Rupnik, 2003; Rupnik 2009), perinatal mice (Meneghel-Rozzo et al., 2004; Rozzo et al., 2009), normal and diabetic rats (Rose at al., 2007), as well as to establish the function of insulin-producing stem cells (Blyszczuk et al., 2005). We made significant contribution to understanding of the function of KATP channels within an intact pancreatic tissue (Speier et al., 2005; Tsiaze et al, 2012). In addition we showed the crutial role and developmental aspect of cell-to-cell communication through Cx36 gap junctions in the activation, coordinated action and deactivation of beta cells (Rozzo et al, 2009; Speier et al., 2007; Rupnik 2009, Stožer and Rupnik, 2013). The complex structure of the pancreatic islet network enabled us to describe emergent properties of the beta cell function in intact tissues (Stožer et al, 2013; Stožer et al, 2013, Dolenšek et al., 2013).

Research Interest

physiology