Review of Research Paper on Insulin :: Biology Diabetes

Missing Graphs BACKGROUND: Let's go back to the 1920s, when diabetes was discovered and the study of glucose began. There was a scientist named Minkowsky, and he wondered what caused diabetes. So, he did something crazy: He took a urine sample from a normal patient and a sample from a diabetic patient, and tasted them! He observed that the sample from the diabetic patient was sweet, so he concluded that diabetes had something to do with high glucose levels (lots of sugar in the blood). In the same decade, two scientists named Benting and Best performed another experiment to see which chemically made pancreas would do the best job in lowering glucose levels. This led to the discovery of insulin. Moving on to the 1940s, scientists were curious about what exactly insulin had to do with glucose. Basically, insulin increases the amount of glucose that gets transported to the plasma membrane of every cell in your body, so the breakdown of glucose will be faster. Now, the question was quantity vs. quality: did insulin actually make the glucose transporters work better, or did insulin simply increase the number of glucose transporters within each cell? This is what this paper answers. PROCEDURES: When looking at the methods in this paper, it is easy to get lost and confused amidst all the scientific terms and complicated language. However, when broken down into simpler terms, the methods used in the experiment in the paper become much clearer and create a basis for understanding for the remainder of the paper. Following is a short and understandable explanation of the methods used in the paper and also 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 between 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 grinding 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.