Glucose stimulation of pancreatic -cells causes oscillatory influx of Ca 2؉ , leading to pulsatile insulin secretion. We have proposed that this is due to oscillations of glycolysis and the ATP/ADP ratio, which modulate the activity of ATP-sensitive K ؉ channels. We show here that dihydroxyacetone, a secretagogue that feeds into glycolysis below the putative oscillator phosphofructokinase, could cause a single initial peak in ] i oscillations with a period of minutes, which correspond to oscillations in insulin secretion (1-3). Similar oscillations in insulin secretion are observed in vivo and are abnormal or diminished in type 2 diabetes (4 -6); loss of oscillations may reduce the effectiveness of insulin (7,8) and thus contribute to the development of the disease. In addition to this K ATP channel-mediated action to raise [Ca 2ϩ ] i , there is also a K ATP channel-independent stimulation of secretion by glucose (9, 10), which may involve the ATP/ADP ratio (9) or lipid signals (11). Because oscillations in insulin secretion can be seen under conditions in which [Ca 2ϩ ] i is not changing, it has been proposed that the underlying oscillator is metabolic rather than ionic (12). In particular, we have proposed that the basis of these oscillations in the pancreatic -cell is the spontaneous oscillations of glycolysis and the ATP/ADP ratio due to pulsed action of the muscle isoform of phosphofructokinase (PFK-M), which is present in -cells (13). As demonstrated previously in muscle extracts, such oscillatory behavior can result from autocatalytic activation of PFK-M by its product, fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (Fru-1,6-P 2 ) (14, 15). The occurrence of glycolytic oscillations in the -cell is supported by observations of similar oscillations in [Ca 2ϩ ] i , glucose 6-phosphate, and the ATP/ADP ratio (16,17), as well as oscillatory release of lactate from perifused islets (18).As a further test of this hypothesized role of glycolytic oscillations, we examined the actions of the trioses dihydroxyacetone (DHA) and glyceraldehyde (GA) that on phosphorylation feed into glycolysis downstream of the phosphofructokinase reaction. The trioses can also serve as secretagogues (19 -21), though they have not been shown to cause oscillations in [Ca 2ϩ ] i or insulin secretion. Of the two, GA is the more potent and the more widely studied. However, there is concern that it may not be a suitable glucose mimic in that it causes strong cellular acidification, most likely because of direct metabolism by glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and perhaps phosphoglycerate kinase to produce glyceric acid (22). We therefore focused on DHA, although some experiments were also performed with GA for comparison. Furthermore, we previously showed in the glycolyzing muscle extract system that the addition of DHA-P could trigger a pulse of PFK activity by