DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i03.012

Pages: 867-873

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a disease that results from autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta-cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. This process is induced in genetically susceptible individuals by some, still not known, environmental factors. These environmental factors are believed to be enterovirus infections, which have a significant role in initiation and development of the disease. The first requirement for infection is the presence of a virus receptor on the host cell. The coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR) is a common receptor for all the coxsackievirus B serotypes, which is a member of the enterovirus family. In this project my aim was to investigate the expression of human CAR mRNA in human pancreatic islet cells, and to investigate the expression of rat CAR mRNA in rat cell line (RINm5F) cultured as monolayer and free foating cell clusters (RCC). The investigation was done by two methods, one that analyzed presence of the CAR gene and one that analyzed the presence of the CAR protein. Results show that the receptor protein CAR was expressed in pancreatic beta-cells of rat and human.