In 2002 the New York filmmaker Woody Allen was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. By then he had already won three Academy Awards, two American Academy as a screenwriter and director, "a Golden Globe as a screenwriter, and had directed more than thirty films, with such memorable titles as Annie Hall, Manhattan or Hannah and her sisters, so it was no surprise to anyone that the award should cede to him.
The day I had to collect the award, Woody Allen pronounced some words that have stayed for the anecdotes in the history of these awards. "I do not deserve this award, but I have diabetes and do not deserve it," he said with characteristic humor and phlegmatic. And is that the American director is one of the more than two hundred million diabetics in the world.
Diabetes is a disease that has been described long before the Christian era and is characterized by increased levels of glucose in the blood. You could say that glucose is the fuel of our body because that is the substance that is used to, through a series of reactions, for energy. Therefore, it is essential to take sufficient amount of glucose through the meal, to which ensures that the body's energy needs. Once digested, the glucose will be absorbed through digestion and through the blood, will be distributed throughout the body. But as damaging as the absence of glucose may be an excess of it. So when the concentration blood glucose exceeds certain limits, the pancreas is responsible for producing a hormone known as insulin. More specifically
are cells called beta cells located in pancreatic glands as small clusters called islets of Langerhans which produce insulin. In these cells, insulin is produced as a mature hormone is not processed, releasing a peptide fragment called C and suffering a reaction that produces so-called disulfide bonds, allowing the two remaining fragments together. When there are abnormally low levels of insulin due to failure of the pancreas or inadequate use of the hormone by the body, the consequence is the increased levels of glucose, then a condition known as diabetes.
to treat diabetes, patients usually inject insulin in order to restore normal levels of blood glucose (between 70 and 100 mg / dl). For a long time, the insulin used for this purpose was of animal origin. That is, the hormone was extracted from the pancreas of beef and pork since both animals are very similar structurally to the human and has the same effect on blood glucose. But this process has a number of drawbacks such as the variable supply of animal pancreatic tissue and obtaining a product which used to contain impurities. Therefore, at present, the insulin used is derived from microorganisms by genetic engineering techniques, the greatest purity that animal insulin, thus preventing unwanted reactions.
The insulin is one of the most typical examples in the production of drugs commercially, but many are now produced by recombinant DNA technology, which is to clone the genes of some human proteins appropriate microorganisms. Therefore, we might say that genetic engineering was born in the seventies with the enzymatic manipulation of DNA, which aim is the deliberate manipulation of genetic material with a purpose. In short, we call the whole genetic engineering techniques that allow manipulation of DNA and its introduction in a given organism with the intention of correcting genetic errors, and improved to create different species and produce certain compounds.
In 1982, insulin became the first genetically engineered protein that was approved for human use. There are currently more than thirty those approved for clinical use. The role assigned to science fiction genetic engineering does not always do justice to it has taken in history. But the truth is that recombinant DNA technology has improved the quality of life for millions of people and that is the way forward.
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