From pancreatic to non-pancreatic insulin: A miraculous journey

Abstract

The improvement on insulin therapy since it was first administered in early of 20th century is still hunting for better option to cure the metabolic disease the diabetes. Remarkable progress made to date in regard to discovery of peptide hormones like recombinant insulin, insulin analogues, oral insulin and inhaler insulin. But insulin therapy to the patients for long periods resulted in immunological complications due to the development of insulin antibodies that cause insulin allergy and many chronic disorders. Management of diabetes without any side effects is still a challenge to the medical community. Therefore, it is prudent to look for options in herbal medicine. Since its discovery a formidable amount of research, strongly suggest that plants produce a protein with most of the characteristics of vertebrate insulins and plays similar roles in plants as it does in animals. The Molecular Dynamics simulations studies of insulin suggesting an interesting result. It has two constant values at different time scales. This may be due to different chains present in the proteins or different conformations at different time scales of simulation. The relative folding energy of insulin like protein from plant source suggested that it has maximum stability at neutral pH i.e., similar to pH of human blood.