Question

Nita found that her Grandma used to inject human insulin that is genetically engineered. She wants to know how such insulin can be produced. Give her an idea about structure of insulin and production of genetically engineered insulin.

Answer 1

It consists of two short polypeptide chains:

chain A and chain B, that are linked together by disulphide bridges. It is necessary to prepare two DNA sequences corresponding to A and B, chains of human insulin and inserted in plasmids of E. coli to produce insulin chains. Chains A and B are produced separately, extracted and combined by creating disulfide bonds to form human insulin.