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Investigating the functional role and intracellular processing of the complement protein C3 in Pancreatic β-Cells

Mohamadalizade Nikoo, Amir Fateh (2025) MOBN03 20242
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
Complement C3 in control: Pulling the strings behind β-cells in the diabetes scene

Complement protein C3 has been discovered to be expressed in the pancreatic β-cells and play crucial roles in their biology regardless of the Immune responses. In my project, I looked into further uncovering the novel roles and intracellular processing of this protein in the β-cells.

Complement system is a well-studied crucial part of immune system which involves numerous proteins, receptors, and regulators. This system has been researched over a century and its involvement in many immunity-related concepts such as direct pathogen elimination, mediating between the innate and adaptive immune system, inflammation etc. had been discovered. Within recent... (More)
Complement C3 in control: Pulling the strings behind β-cells in the diabetes scene

Complement protein C3 has been discovered to be expressed in the pancreatic β-cells and play crucial roles in their biology regardless of the Immune responses. In my project, I looked into further uncovering the novel roles and intracellular processing of this protein in the β-cells.

Complement system is a well-studied crucial part of immune system which involves numerous proteins, receptors, and regulators. This system has been researched over a century and its involvement in many immunity-related concepts such as direct pathogen elimination, mediating between the innate and adaptive immune system, inflammation etc. had been discovered. Within recent years, novel immunity-independent intracellular roles of the elements of this system in function and biology of various cell types have been found. Namely of these studies, our group has discovered the expression of complement protein C3 in the pancreatic β-cells and its role in promoting cell survival through regulating autophagy in conditions mimicking diabetes and cellular stress.

In my research, I investigated how C3 is localized within pancreatic β-cells, explored its potential interaction partners that may mediate its functional roles, examined its involvement in autophagy, studied its intracellular processing, and ultimately assessed its impact on β-cell function and the expression of key β-cell markers.

My methods and what I have found
My work was mainly to dive deeper on our groups previous findings, and to examine the reproducibility of some of the findings related to C3 in β-cells and some other cell lines from other research groups. For this purpose, I used Co-Immunoprecipitation for investigating the proposed interaction of C3 with the epigenetic regulator enzymes followed by Immunohistochemistry using confocal microscopy to validate its nuclear presence. Using the same microscopy technique, I then looked into if C3 is present in the lysosomes to continue our team’s work on autophagy. As the field still lacks how this innate immune protein is processed inside of the cells, I co-stained the cells with different antibodies to uncover the present C3 form inside the cells. Finally, I finished up my project by looking into how C3 affects the expression of some of the key β-cell markers which are known to be dysregulated during the progression of Type 2 Diabetes using q-PCRs and Western Blotting.
My findings in this project overall did further support the role of C3 in autophagy, strongly suggested a unique C3 form present inside the cells, and showed that C3 is affecting the expression of some of the key β-cell markers which indicates its involvement in regulating the cell function and differentiation state. The findings from my project are very interesting when it comes to better understanding the biology of the β-cells and for proposing better therapeutic approaches in the future for diabetes, particularly type 2.

Master’s Degree Project in Biology/Molecular Biology/Molecular genetics and Biotechnology 60 credits
Department of Biology, Lund University

Advisor: Anna Blom
Medical Protein Chemistry, Wallenberg Laboratory, Lund University. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Mohamadalizade Nikoo, Amir Fateh
supervisor
organization
course
MOBN03 20242
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
9214699
date added to LUP
2025-10-30 14:31:59
date last changed
2025-10-30 14:31:59
@misc{9214699,
  author       = {{Mohamadalizade Nikoo, Amir Fateh}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Investigating the functional role and intracellular processing of the complement protein C3 in Pancreatic β-Cells}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}