Response to Comment on Satin et al. "Take Me To Your Leader": An Electrophysiological Appraisal of the Role of Hub Cells in Pancreatic Islets. Diabetes 2020;69:830-836.

We thank Rutter et al. for commenting in their letter (1) about our recent Perspectives in Diabetes article (2), which was concerned with their hub cell hypothesis. In the letter, Rutter et al. state that “if a set of assumptions does not readily explain the experimental evidence, one should consider adjustments to the former.” While we agree in principle with this statement, we respectfully point out that our reservations about the hub cell model are not based on “assumptions” but on experimental evidence accumulated over many decades and in several independent laboratories. We acknowledge that we “fail to offer any explanation for [their] optogenetics, photopharmacology, or photoablation studies,” but this is the …