Insulin secretory granules labelled with phogrin-fluorescent proteins show alterations in size, mobility and responsiveness to glucose stimulation in living β-cells

The intracellular life of insulin secretory granules (ISGs) from biogenesis to secretion depends on their structural (e.g. size) and dynamic (e.g. diffusivity, mode of motion) properties. Thus, it would be useful to have rapid and robust measurements of such parameters in living β-cells. To provide such measurements, we have developed a fast spatiotemporal fluctuation spectroscopy. We calculate an imaging-derived Mean Squared Displacement (iMSD), which simultaneously provides the size, average diffusivity, and anomalous coefficient of ISGs, without the need to extract individual trajectories. Clustering of structural and dynamic quantities in a multidimensional parametric space defines the ISGs’ properties for different conditions. First, we create a reference using INS-1E cells expressing proinsulin fused to a fluorescent protein (FP) under basal culture conditions and validate our analysis by testing well-established stimuli, such as glucose intake, cytoskeleton disruption, or cholesterol overload. After, we investigate the effect of FP-tagged ISG protein markers on the structural and dynamic properties of the granule. While iMSD analysis produces similar results for most of the lumenal markers, the transmembrane marker phogrin-FP shows a clearly altered result. Phogrin overexpression induces a substantial granule enlargement and higher mobility, together with a partial de-polymerization of the actin cytoskeleton, and reduced cell responsiveness to glucose stimulation. Our data suggest a more careful interpretation of many previous ISG-based reports in living β-cells. The presented data pave the way to high-throughput cell-based screening of ISG structure and dynamics under various physiological and pathological conditions.