{"doi":"10.2337/db20-0679","title":"Virgin β-Cells at the Neogenic Niche Proliferate Normally and Mature Slowly","abstract":"Proliferation of pancreatic β-cells has long been known to reach its peak in the neonatal stages and decline during adulthood. However, β-cell proliferation has been studied under the assumption that all β-cells constitute a single, homogenous population. It is unknown whether a subpopulation of β-cells retains the capacity to proliferate at a higher rate and thus contributes disproportionately to the maintenance of mature β-cell mass in adults. We therefore assessed the proliferative capacity and turnover potential of virgin β-cells, a novel population of immature β-cells found at the islet periphery. We demonstrate that virgin β-cells can proliferate but do so at rates similar to those of mature β-cells from the same islet under normal and challenged conditions. Virgin β-cell proliferation rates also conform to the age-dependent decline previously reported for β-cells at large. We further show that virgin β-cells represent a long-lived, stable subpopulation of β-cells with low turnover into mature β-cells under healthy conditions. Our observations indicate that virgin β-cells at the islet periphery can divide but do not contribute disproportionately to the maintenance of adult β-cell mass.","journal":"Diabetes","year":2021,"id":171428,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":26,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9503,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":254421,"name":"Jing Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-4825-9674","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":697954,"name":"Supraja Saravanakumar","orcid":"0000-0002-0698-750X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":706906,"name":"Marcus F. Flisher","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":706128,"name":"David R. Grimm","orcid":"0000-0002-7422-4280","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":706129,"name":"Talitha van der Meulen","orcid":"0000-0002-2150-9258","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":7355,"name":"Mark O. Huising","orcid":"0000-0002-6594-2205","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":706127,"name":"Sharon Lee","orcid":"0000-0001-8995-9784","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":40,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:33.067299Z","pmid":"33563657","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}