How are bacteria used to produce human insulin?

Bacteria are used to produce human insulin through recombinant DNA technology, a process that transforms these microorganisms into biological factories for synthesizing human proteins.12

The production process involves several key steps:

• Genetic Engineering: Scientists identify the specific DNA sequence that codes for human insulin. Because the chemical structure and amino acid sequence of insulin are known, this DNA can be synthesized in a laboratory.3
• Insertion: This synthetic DNA is incorporated into a laboratory strain of bacteria, typically Escherichia coli.3
• Synthesis: Once the gene is introduced, the bacteria are directed to produce the human protein as part of their normal cellular processes.3
• Scaling: Pharmaceutical companies scale up this synthetic process to produce the large, marketable quantities of insulin required for the treatment of diabetes mellitus.13

Before this technology was developed in the early 1980s, patients relied on insulin extracted from the pancreases of cows and pigs. Recombinant human insulin is now the standard, as it is identical to the insulin produced naturally in the human body.24