Focus here, if you will, on the weird corn-on-the-cob part of this image. It features something most of us are unlikely to see, but which we all use every day: the pancreas. And it, like everything we encounter, has a history.
The pancreas is hidden deep in the cavity of our guts, behind the stomach. It acts like a gland, cranking out many hormones with two very different tasks — digestive enzymes that break down food from the stomach into more useable bits, and the production of insulin and other sugar-regulating hormones.
The term “pancreas” came from an ancient physician from Asia Minor, called Ruphos. From the Greek, it translates as “all-flesh,” which Ruphos might have thought referred to texture, but also is representative of the amazing multi-tasking functionality of the organ.
My favorite parts of the pancreas are called the Islets of Langerhans, which seem like part of a map from a fantasy novel but really are cell clusters that secrete insulin (the Beta-cells) and other hormones. A paper from 2011 discusses how Beta cells and cells from our nervous system share an evolutionary ancestor: even though nervous cells and the insulin-producing Beta cells don’t share a common tissue, they have similar genetic expression patterns – the storage and release of insulin by Beta cells is almost the exact way that neurons store and release neurotransmitters. Knowledge such as this can tell scientists more about how stem cells develop.
Source(s): _Insights & Perspectives_, “B [Beta] B-cell evolution: how the pancreas borrowed from the brain,” Margot E. Westfield and Derek van see Kooy, 2011. _Pancreas Club_, “History of the Pancreas,” John M. Howard, 2017. Image from Columbia University, The Pancreas Center, “The Pancreas and its functions “.
