Insulin Today

The discovery of insulin by Banting and Best represents one of the major humanitarian and scientific milestones of this century. It is therefore an especially great privilege to participate in the annual tradition of this lecture honoring the memory of Dr. Frederick G. Banting. It is rather remarkable to remember that Fred Banting was just 29 and Charles Best only 21 when they carried out their classic experiments. Insulin caused great excitement in 1921, and its impact has continued undiminished on many levels over the intervening years. The first islet hormone indeed has lived up to its initial life-saving promise and, in addition, has been an important stimulus to the development of many scientific fields, including intermediary metabolism, protein chemistry, x-ray crystallography, molecular genetics, cell biology, endocrinology, and many others. Insulin has generated many important concepts regarding protein structure and biosynthesis, and it is continuing to produce new insights in many of these areas. In this review I will touch on some of these and also briefly consider some new aspects of insulin's binding, degradation, and action.

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