Pancreas

The pancreas contains exocrine acinar cells that produce digestive enzymes and endocrine islets that regulate blood glucose. Although these components are conserved across mammals, their organization differs: human and primate islets have a more intermingled distribution of alpha and beta cells, whereas rodent islets typically have a beta-cell-rich core surrounded by other endocrine cell types. This distinction is particularly relevant when interpreting genes associated with insulin, glucagon and other endocrine functions.

Figure 1. Tissue sample overview of the pancreas

Comparative transcriptomics of the mammalian pancreas

The transcriptomic data is used to identify genes with elevated expression in individual tissues or groups of tissues, classified into three categories:

Tissue enriched: Genes with elevated expression in a single tissue compared with all other tissues.
Group enriched: Genes with elevated expression in a limited group of tissues compared with the remaining tissues.
Tissue enhanced: Genes with elevated expression in one or more tissues compared with the average expression across tissues (gap ratio ≥2)

Tissue specificity is evaluated at two levels: first, within each species using all available tissue types, and second, using only tissues that can be directly compared between the species and human. This distinction makes it possible to explore both tissue-specific expression within each species and the conservation of expression patterns across evolution.

The results can be explored for individual genes on the gene summary pages or searched to identify genes with specific expression patterns. To assess evolutionary conservation, pairwise overlap analysis compares each species individually with human, identifying genes that share the same tissue specificity classification in corresponding tissues and quantifying the extent of overlap between species.

Tissue	Species	Elevated	Human elevated overlap
Tissue	Species	Elevated	Complete overlap	Partial overlap
Pancreas	Macaque	175	18	65
	Mouse	112	4	45
	Rat	129	4	53

Pancreas

Species coverage

Pancreatic samples are included for macaque, rat and mouse.

No pig pancreas sample is available in this dataset because of technical difficulties during sample collection or processing; this does not indicate an anatomical difference.