The islets of Langerhans represent one of the many complex endocrine organs in mammals. Traditionally, islet function is studied by a mixture of physiological, cell biological, and molecular biological methods. Recently, novel techniques stemming from the ever-increasing toolbox provided by chemical laboratories have been added to the repertoire. Many emerging techniques will soon be available to manipulate and monitor islet function at the single-cell level and potentially in intact model animals, as well as in isolated human islets. Here, we review the most current small-molecule-based and genetically encoded molecular tool sets available to study islet function. We provide an outlook regarding future tool developments that will impact islet research, with a special focus on the interplay between different islet cell types.

朗格汉斯岛代表哺乳动物众多复杂的内分泌器官之一。传统上，胰岛功能是通过生理学、细胞生物学和分子生物学方法的混合研究的。最近，源自化学实验室提供的不断增加的工具箱的新技术已被添加到曲目中。许多新兴技术将很快可用于在单细胞水平上操纵和监测胰岛功能，并可能在完整的模型动物以及孤立的人类胰岛中进行操作和监测。在这里，我们回顾了可用于研究胰岛功能的最新的基于小分子和基因编码的分子工具集。我们对将影响胰岛研究的未来工具开发进行了展望，特别关注不同胰岛细胞类型之间的相互作用。