1878 1879 1913

While searching for the organism Walther Fleming describes the In studies on the fruit fly Drosophila
responsible for anthrax, Robert Koch ‘chromatin’ present in cell nuclei; this melanogaster, Thomas Hunt Morgan
develops techniques for the cultivation will later be identified as DNA. discovers more rules of inheritance.
of bacteria that are still used today.

Gene technology: human insulin from bacteria

In 1982 human insulin became the world’s first biotechnolog-
ically manufactured medicine. This hormone plays a central
role in glucose metabolism in the body. In diabetics the body
either has lost the ability to produce insulin in sufficient quan-
tity (type 1 diabetes) or else no longer responds adequately
to the hormone (type 2 diabetes). All people with type 1 dia-
betes and most people with type 2 diabetes require regular
doses of exogenous insulin.
Until 1982 insulin was isolated from the pancreas of
slaughtered animals via a complex and expensive process –
up to 100 pig pancreases being required per diabetic patient
per year. In its day, this classical biotechnological method it-
self represented a major medical breakthrough: until 1922,
when medical scientists discovered the effect of pancreatic
extracts, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes was tantamount to a
death sentence. The hormone obtained from cattle and pigs
differs little from the human hormone. However, some patients
treated with it develop dangerous allergic reactions.
In 1978 the biotech company Genentech developed a method
of producing human insulin in bacterial cells. Small rings of
DNA (plasmids), each containing part of the gene for the
human hormone, were inserted into strains of Escherichia coli.
The bacteria then produced one or the other of the two insu-
lin chains. These were then separately isolated, combined and
finally converted enzymatically into active insulin. The pharma-
ceutical company Eli Lilly acquired an exclusive licence for this
method from Genentech and introduced the medicine in 1982
in the USA and later worldwide – thus firing the starting gun
for medical biotechnology.
Some 200 million diabetics worldwide now benefit from the
production of human insulin. Without gene technology and
biotechnology this would be impossible: in order to meet cur-
rent demands using pancreatic extract, around 20 billion pigs
would have to be slaughtered annually.

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