Word: insulin
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Gilbert and the team of scientists traveled to England to devise a method to make bacteria produce human insulin, an experiment which can only be performed in Britain because of less stringent regulations...
...those diabetics who either cannot make enough of the vital hormone or cannot use it effectively, the feat is potentially a double boon. In years ahead, it should ensure them of an abundant supply of insulin, which is needed by the body to metabolize sugar and other carbohydrates. It will also reduce their dependence on insulin extracted from cattle and swine, which causes allergic reactions in some 5% of the diabetics who need...
...research teams-one at the City of Hope National Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Duarte, under Dr. Keiichi Itakura, the other led by Biochemist David Goeddell at a small South San Francisco biochemical firm, Genentech Inc. Though scientists had already produced a precursor of rat insulin with bacteria, making the finished human variety posed greater difficulties. For it consists of two distinct molecular chains, a so-called A strand and a B strand, each of which is produced separately inside the cells of the pancreas under the direction of its own characteristic gene...
...enough. But much harder was the job of getting the genetic instructions inside the potential bacterial factory, a weakened lab strain of the intestinal microbe Escherichia coli. The scientists resorted to a little molecular chicanery. Using their new gene-splicing or recombinant DNA techniques, they hitched their two synthetic insulin genes individually to one of the bacterium's own genes. Then they inserted both the synthetic and the natural material into fresh E. coli. As a result, E. coli's DNA-reading machinery was unable to distinguish the foreign genes from its own and began ordering up production...
Much more research is required before bacterial-made insulin reaches the retail pharmacy. City of Hope Diabetologist Rachmiel Levine suggested that this might happen in two to five years. Eli Lilly & Co., which produces most of the insulin now used in the U.S., shied away from such optimistic projections but announced an agreement with Genentech to begin a program for mass-producing insulin with the help of the tiny bacteria...