Word: insulin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...past year, the Holy Grail of genetic engineering has been the production of human insulin by E. coli bacteria cells. This work, if successful, would provide an almost unlimited source of natural human insulin for diabetics at a low price, a very tangible medical benefit which would go far towards convincing the public of the benefits of recombinant DNA research...
Exaggerated and contradictory headlines have chronicled progress in this research in Cambridge and California over the past year. Some observers, however, have felt the the scientists quest for insulin-production is more of a race. Researchers, they point out, are not ignorant of the potential prize of being first--lucrative contracts with drug companies and a likely Nobel Prize...
Critics point to one of the research groups working to induce bacteria to manufacture insulin which already has a contract with a large pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly & Co. The speed at which the work has advanced--and possible shortcuts scientists may have taken--have raised doubts...
Walter Gilbert '53, American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology, and his Harvard research team are working on the insulin problem. Gilbert has been using the MIT P-3 lab for the past year pending completion of the Harvard lab. This past July his group developed a bacterial strain which synthesized rat proinsulin, a modified form of insulin...
...central problem is finding a way to induce the bacterial cells to "express" the inserted foreign insulin genes. Researchers have to trick the cell into "reading" the added DNA along with the rest of its genes in order to translate its coded instructions for making insulin. And once the insulin is synthesized, the stage at which Gilbert's team is near, the researchers must smuggle the insulin safely out of the cell and isolate it in high quantity...