Question

Explain the various steps involved in the production of artificial insulin.

Answer 1

Hint: Insulin is a hormone produced by the beta cells of the pancreatic islets. It is responsible for regulating carbohydrates, fats, proteins by the absorption of glucose from the blood into liver, fat and skeletal muscles.

Complete answer: The artificial insulin is the first product obtained by genetic engineering. It is produced by the recombinant DNA technology.
As the insulin is formed by the hormone in the human cell, the gene responsible for producing can be extracted from the human cell only. A plasmid is obtained from the bacterial cell. The special restriction enzymes are used to cut the plasmid. The gene for insulin is inserted into the plasmid. This process is called recombination. When one part of a human cell with the help of restriction enzymes gets inserted into the plasmid of the bacterial cell for making recombinants.
Hence, the bacterial cell has now contained the human insulin gene by the process of R-DNA technology. In this way, the insulin gene translates and produces the recombinant insulin.
Production of insulin by rDNA techniques was achieved by an American company, Eli Lily in 1983. It is prepared by two DNA sequences to chain A and chain B of human insulin. It is introduced in a plasmid of Escherichia coli to produce insulin chains.
Chain A or Chain B are produced and combined by creating disulfide bonds to form human insulin or Humulin.

Note: Using specific techniques, the plasmid of E. coli is removed and isolated.
The isolated plasmid is opened by specific restriction enzymes and then the insertion of human insulin takes place. Then the recombinant plasmid becomes capable of synthesizing human insulin after putting it again into the host cell.