Review of Research Paper on Insulin :: Biology Diabetes

Missing GraphsBACKGROUNDLets go back to the 1920s, when diabetes was discovered and the study of glucosebegan. There was a scientist named Minkowsky, and he wondered what caused diabetes. So, hedid something crazy He took a urine sample from a normal patient and a sample from adiabetic patient, and tasted them He discovered that the sample from the diabetic patient wassweet, so he concluded that diabetes had something to do with high glucose levels (lots ofsugar in the blood).In the same decade, two scientists named Benting and Best performed otherexperiment to see which chemically made pancreas would do the best job in lowering glucoselevels. This led to the discovery of insulin.Moving on to the 1940s, scientists were curious some what exactly insulin had to dowith glucose. Basically, insulin increases the amount of glucose that gets transported to theplasma membrane of every cell in your body, so the breakdown of glucose will be faster.Now, the question was quantity vs. superio r did insulin actually make the glucosetransporters work better, or did insulin simply increase the number of glucose transporterswithin each cell? This is what this paper answers. PROCEDURESWhen looking at the methods in this paper, it is well to get lost and confused amidst allthe scientific terms and complicated language. However, when broken down into simpler terms,the methods used in the experiment in the paper get going much clearer and create a basis forunderstanding for the remainder of the paper.Following is a short and understandable explanation of the methods used in the paper and alike an explanation of the experiment that was performed to reach to conclusions in the paper. * The first method mentioned in the paper is the collagenase method. This method refers to the collagen that holds the fat cells that were extracted from the rats together. * This method is simply the breaking down of the collagen amidst the cells in order to separate and isolate them. * Another method used in the paper is refereed to when talking about homogenizing the cells. * This method refers to mixing up and craunch of the fat cells to make into an evenly distributed soup like substance that can then be used in the experiment. When the homogenized soup is prepared, it is them put into a centrifuge tube and centrifuged.