How can bacteria produce a human protein

The stages of genetic engineering The stages of this method of genetic engineering are: The location of the section of DNA containing the gene for making the human protein insulin must be identified it is on human chromosome number 7. A specific enzyme is used to extract the required gene from the human chromosome. Plasmids are then removed from bacterial cells. The DNA of the plasmids is cut open with a specific enzyme.

It is released from the pancreas when the glucose concentration in blood gets too high. Individuals with type 1 diabetes do not produce insulin, so they cannot control their blood glucose levels.

They take insulin on a daily basis to stop their blood glucose levels becoming dangerously high. Insulin was the first protein drug to be produced commercially in bacteria. In , a version of the human gene that encodes insulin was cloned and introduced into E. The bacteria were shown to produce a form of human insulin. Within 4 years, bacteria-produced insulin was commercially available as a treatment for diabetes. Add to collection. How insulin started a revolution.

Useful link More information about diabetes in New Zealand. Go to full glossary Add 0 items to collection. But only a fraction of these proteins have a human-like pattern of sugars, making it a slow and expensive process. Furthermore, some of the proteins, such as cancer treatments, are toxic to mammalian cells and so destroy the very cells producing them.

Now a team of scientists at GlycoFi and Dartmouth College, both in New Hampshire, has produced a genetically modified yeast Pitchia pastoris that is capable of adding sugars to proteins in exactly the same sequence as in humans. They then sequentially engineered five new genes into the yeast, which added on the unique tree-like sugar molecules found on human proteins. The team created a hybrid, half-humanised protein earlier in New Scientist print edition, 26 April , but have now created yeast that make fully humanised proteins.

So far three strains of the yeast have been developed, each of which make a different human protein.