Team:Minnesota/Modeling

Team:Minnesota/Project/Insulin - 2015.igem.org

 

Team:Minnesota/Project/Insulin

From 2015.igem.org

Team:Minnesota - Main Style Template Team:Minnesota - Template

Attributions


Insulin: Basic Background

What is the role of Insulin in the Human body?
      Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that removes glucose from the blood. In healthy individuals, excess glucose is readily removed from the blood stream by a proportional production of insulin. In persons with diabetes mellitus however; the body is either resistant to insulin, or it has a reduced capacity to produce insulin. Those individuals require an external source of insulin.

Why are we expressing human Insulin?
      The ability to produce recombinant human Insulin cheaply has long been a lucrative goal. There are millions of people worldwide who are dependent on Insulin derived from production methods that make the product expensive -and further yet- potentially dangerous.Our team thinks that the current production methods for human Insulin are inefficient and can be optimized by being expressed in Pichia pastoris.