Diabetes is a disease that affects millions of Americans everyday. As the years go on, diabetes is becoming more and more prevalent within America. Ongoing research is being done to gain valuable intellect on the disease and for the development of treatments for the disease. There are a few different causes of diabetes but each involves contact with insulin and insulin receptor on some level, since insulin and insulin receptor are involved in the pathway that regulates glucose levels within the body. The insulin/insulin receptor pathway is vital in maintaining homeostasis within the body. As greater information is gathered on the insulin receptor structure and how it functions a better understanding of treatments for diabetes can possibly be unlocked.
Insulin Receptor Gene
The insulin receptor has several defined exons that encode for various regions of the protein and knowing this information begins to allow for greater insight into the structure of insulin receptor. Origination of insulin receptor begins through proteolytic cleavage of the zymogen of insulin receptor (Seino et al., 1989). The insulin receptor is a homodimeric protein with α2β2 subunits (Huang et al., 2004). Upon analysis of cDNA, it was discovered that eleven exons make up the α subunit and 11 exons make up the β subunit (Seino et al., 1989). These exons lead to the specific characteristics that insulin receptor displays within its structure.
General Structure
There is a plethora of research on insulin receptor structure since it has many vital functions within the body and because of its function or lack of function in such a prevalent disease as diabetes. As mentioned before insulin receptor is a homodimeric protein containing two α and two...
... middle of paper ...
... M.C. How insulin engages its primary binding site on the insulin receptor. Nature, 493: 241-248 (2013)
Olefsky, J. The insulin receptor: a multifunctional protein. Diabetes, 39: 1009-1016 (1990)
Schaffer, L.; A model for insulin binding to the insulin receptor. European Journal of Biochemistry, 221:1127-1132 (1994)
Seino, S.; Seino, M.; Nishi, S.; Bell, G. Structure of the human insulin receptor gene and characterization of its promoter. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 86: 114-118 (1989)
Smith, B.J.; Huang, K.; Kong, G.; Chan, S.J.; Nakagawa, S.; Menting, J.G.; Hu, S.; Whittaker, J.; Steiner, D.F.; Katsoyannis, P.G. Structural resolution of a tandem hormone-binding element in the insulin receptor and its implications for design of peptide agonists. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(15): 6771-6776 (2010)
Rosenfeld, Louis. Insulin: Discovery and Controversy. 2002. American Association for Clinical Chemistry Inc. 9 October 2009 .
Our body obtains the energy by digesting the carbohydrates into glucose. Volumes of glucose are required by the body to create ATP. ATP is short for 'Adenosine Triphosphate ' and is an energy carrier. When we consume too many carbohydrates our body produces a lot of glucose and as a result blood glucose levels rise and sometimes they may rise over the normal range of blood glucose concentration. To bring it back within the healthy range, the homeostatic system of blood glucose regulation is used. The blood flows through the pancreas where the beta cells, receptors, detect the high blood glucose level. To counteract this stimuli beta cells alert the control centre, which are also the beta cells located in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. The secretion of insulin has to be done quickly but can only be carried out when insulin gene is switched on. Turning on the insulin gene switch can take 30 minutes to an hour therefore, the production of insulin by beta cells are done in advance and are packaged in vesicles right until blood glucose rises. Glucose comes into the beta cell to trigger the vesicle that contains the insulin to move towards the plasma membrane and fuse. This releases the insulin into the bloodstream where they are distributed throughout the body and only affect specific target cells. The receptor, a protein, on the target cell’s plasma membrane recognises and connects
Insulin: a hormone made by the pancreas that allows your body to use sugar (glucose) from carbohydrates in the food that you eat for energy or to store glucose for future use. Insulin helps keeps your blood sugar level from getting too high (hyperglycemia) or too low (hypoglycemia). Before insulin Diabetes mellitus was a chronic disease that affected thousands of people in Canada and beyond. In the first half of the 20th century, medical professionals understood that diabetes mellitus involved the body’s inability to metabolize food, especially carbohydrates. “Insuline” was already in development as many medical professionals like Joseph Freiherr and Oscar Minkowski, isolated its properties before Banting had his ideas. As well Ancient Greek
Insulin is a hormone that is produced by specialized cells on the surface of the pancreas called pancreatic islets or Islets of Langerhans. It causes changes to occur in the plasma membrane of the cell that cause the cell to pull in glucose from the blood stream. The hormonal counterpart of insulin is glycogon, which serves to promote the rele...
Like the receptors for other protein hormones, the receptor for insulin is embedded in the plasma
The faulty responsiveness of body tissues to insulin normally entails the insulin receptor found in cell membranes. The other type, the gestational diabetes happens in women who have not been diagnosed with diabetes before and show elevated blood glucose amounts during pregnancy. There is no explicit reason that has been acknowledged but it is assumed that the hormones secreted dur...
By the 1920s, diabetes was considered a global epidemic, affecting people across the globe. Scientists unanimously agreed that diabetes was “the failure of the pancreas to secrete enough of a certain mysterious substance necessary for the proper utilization of carbohydrates as a body fuel.”2 This had stumped scientists for years, and no sufficient cure or treatment had been found. However, in 1921, Toronto doctor Frederick Banting, assisted by J. Macleod, Charles Best, and Dr. J.B Collip successfully created insulin, which was subsequently tested on dogs with diabetes before experimenting on the first human, Leonard Thompson in
Insulin is a hormone used to control blood glucose. This hormone can act on cells to: stimulate glucose, protein, and lipid metabolism. Understanding insulin is important for knowing its effect if there is an inadequate amount in the body. Before scientists understood insulin, people who’s bodies stopped producing the hormone
The figure also shows that one in every eleven adults suffers from diabetes under the Sun. The facts and figures researched in this report clearly shows that diabetes has become one of the most common diseases, and we need more doctors and scholars who can make continuous and serious efforts to come up with a better medicine or treatment for diabetes.
Insulin is stimulated by an increase in plasma glucose concentration. It's role pertains to decreasing those blood glucose levels by increasing the use of glucose as fuel or the storage of fat in adipose tissue. Whereas insulin targets most cells of the body, glucagon primarily targets the liver in particular. It comes into play when low glucose concentrations are detected by the sympathetic nervous system. Glucagon is responsible for the stimulation of glucose production from non-sugar substrates and the breakdown of glycogen into glucose so it can be further metabolized for energy production, or gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis
Insulin is a hormone in the body that is critical in many of the body’s functions. Insulin is a hormone made up of a small polypeptide protein that is secreted by the pancreas it affects carbohydrate, protein, and fat metabolism. Your body breaks these nutrients down into sugar molecules, amino acid molecules, and lipid molecules. The body can also store and reassemble these molecules into more complex forms. Insulin causes the storage of these nutrients. After eating a meal blood sugars rise rapidly especially after eating carbohydrates, this signals the release of insulin. Insulin binds to insulin receptors on the outside of cells to open up channels for glucose to move into the cell for storage by the means of GLUT-4 inside the cell. With insulin resistance the pancreas has to work harder to make up for the insulin resistance but as the resistance gets worse the pancreas can not keep up and blood glucose levels stay elevated. A major way to prevent type II diabetes and high blood glucose is to improve a patient’s insulin sensitivity.
Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic medical condition that affects millions of people. This chronic condition is associated with high levels of glucose in the blood. As a newly diagnosed patient it is crucial to be aware how our bodies react to food consumption in regards to how insulin is produced to fully understand the concept of insulin production by the pancreas.
Insulin lispro (HUMALOG) is identical to human insulin except at positions B28 and B29, where the sequence of
Glucagon is a hormone that works to increase blood glucose levels by stimulating the breakdown of glycogen to glucose, and the production of glucose from none carbohydrate pathways. Glucagon is an antagonist to insulin by making more glucose and keeping it available in the blood stream, whereas insulin works to transport glucose from the blood stream into tissue cells. Amylin is another hormone produce by beta cells. It is co-secreted with insulin and works to inhibit glucagon. Typically and dysfunction of insulin production is associated with a dysfunction in amylin production. Incretins are peptides found in the gastrointestinal tract. They are peptide hormones that are released in response to the intake of food. Incretins are responsible for the sensitivity of beta cells to blood glucose levels, and help improve insulin response to meals. These peptides bind to the beta cells and stimulate the production and release of insulin (McCance, 2010). A combination of multiple factors dysfunction is responsible for type 2 diabetes. When treating the disease, the number one priority to control glucose intake and decrease weight of the patient. A reduction in weight will result in a decrease in insulin need. Medications like metformin, pioglitazone, and glimepiride can also help to control blood glucose by working with
The pancreas, in addition to its digestive process has two important hormones, Insulin and Glucagon which are important for the maintenance of blood glucose level at a narrow range. Not only glucose, but also they are important for protein and lipid metabolism. Glucagon is secreted by the alpha cells of the islet of Langerhans and Insulin is secreted by the beta cells of Langerhans. Both are secreted to portal vein. (8)