Errors in Insulin Biosynthesis

Insulin, like all proteins, is susceptible to mutational change. However, efforts to find abnormal insulin molecules have been unsuccessful mainly because of severe limitations in the availability of material for study. Thus, although over 150 hemoglobin variants have been detected in human beings by now, not a single documented example of an insulin variant can be cited.With the discovery that insulin is synthesized via the larger single chain precursor, proinsulin, which is processed into insulin by selective proteolysis within the beta cells, additional possibilities for inherited structural disturbances became apparent.1 Not only was 50 per cent more protein sequence . . .