What is Humulin(Human Insulin)?
Humulin…. the another name of humulin is called “Human insulin”. Insulin…. as we would have already heard this word before.Insulin is the hormone which is secreted in the pancreas by Beta cells called “Islets of langerhans”. The main function of insulin is to reduce the glucose levels in the body. What is the main purpose of reducing glucose levels. As this function is useful in the case of diabetes. Not only in diabetes cases, but also it mainly helps to regulate the blood sugars.
Diabetes…. This is the most common disease we have been seeing in our daily life. In order to control diabetes, insulin is required, because in patients of diabetes, they are lack of insulin so we have to give insulin from external sources.
In previous days, in order to extract insulin and to prepare that, the insulin have to extract from different animals pancreas such as cow, sheep, buffaloes etc..,.. In the process of such extraction, many animals would have to sacrifice their lives for the sake of small amounts of insulin.
- Metabolism of fats, carbohydrates, protein, and insulin.
- Function and structure of blood vessels and nerves.
- Humulin is the product which is produced from this technique.
- This technique is very advanced and useful to create many innovative inventions. This technique runs in the way of genetic engineering, gene transfer, gene modifications etc..,
- So, in the way of genetic engineering, this humulin was prepared.
- Let’s see the process of preparation of humulin.
- As we know that in our body, in every cell there is a presence of DNA & RNA ie.., genetic material.
- This rDNA technology produces insulin by firstly collecting the insulin gene from humans.
- The insulin gene only isolated from the human pancreatic Beta cells, with the help of enzyme “Restriction endonuclease”.
- After the isolation, the gene have to replicate and have to show its properties in active state.
- So the gene is inserted in to plasmid of bacteria.
- Here, plasmid is defined as the vehicle which is used to carry DNA and helps it to replicate.
- Plasmid have to take from prokaryotes, in prokaryotes, E-coli plasmid is selected because it somewhat resembles the activity of mammalian cells.
- Also E-coli plasmid structure is simple and also its gene consists of only 14 amino acids.
- As we already known that plasmid have the property to multiplicate the DNA, so the insulin gene is inserted in to E-coli plasmid.
- The insulin gene combines with plasmid DNA inside the E-coli and produces many number of recombinant insulin gene.
- After multiplication, it is subjected for cloning.
- Cloning is done in a fermentor under appropriate favourable conditions such as temperature, PH, aeration along with nutrient agar medium.
- Now the insulin gene is taken out from fermentor and subjected to downstream processing (separation, adsorption, drying, polishing, purification, marketing).
- After undergoing all the processes of downstream processing, it is subjected for marketing.
- This rDNA technology is the branch of science of biotechnology.
- By the innovative ideas and inventions of this technique, made many things easily available to the people.
- Presented by Stella mercy, S. Sai sushma