Bacterial Production of Insulin
Insulin is a
hormone made in the
pancreas that is used to adjust the level of
glucose in the
blood. For a diabetic, the amount of insulin fluctuates so they need to manually adjust the level in their
blood, for which they need a supply of
insulin.
Insulin was in the past always obtained from the
pancreas of
pigs. This resulted in problems concerning its
efficiency and possibility of
rejection from the body.
However, due to recent investigations into biological engineering it has been possible to obtain insulin that will not be rejected and is as efficient as human insulin, because indeed it is human insulin, only it is not obtained from humans. Bacterial cells are what is known as Prokayotic cells because they do not have the complex organelles that eukaryotic (e.g. mammalian cells) have. Whereas Eukaryotic cell contain their DNA in a con fined nucleus in the form of chromosomes, Bacteria either keep their DNA free floating in their cytoplasm or as ring shaped strands of DNA called Plasmids.
These Plasmids can be broken apart using a restriction enzyme and then a section of customised DNA can be inserted into the loop of DNA. The bacterium will then start producing the amino acid chain that will eventually be insulin. These Bacteria will be grown in huge numbers so that very much insulin is produced.