Using a synthetic switch to regulate insulin receptor activation

One hundred years ago in 1921 Sir Frederick G. Banting and Charles H. Best at the University of Toronto discovered insulin; they successfully isolated an extract from the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas and demonstrated that its injection into a diabetic dog lowered its blood sugar by 40% in 1 h (1). Insulin was subsequently found to regulate the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and protein by promoting the absorption of blood glucose into cells of the liver, fat, and skeletal muscle. In 1934 Dorothy Crowfoot, later Hodgkin, obtained crystals of insulin from the Beecham Group plc, a British pharmaceutical company, which was producing the material in crystalline form for treatment of diabetics. Although Dorothy managed to get diffraction patterns of insulin in the mid-1930s (2), the structure determination proved a challenge. Two decades later Fred Sanger defined the sequence of insulin (3), which was an important step required … [↵][1]1Email: tom{at}cryst.bioc.cam.ac.uk. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1