Video 1
Insulin, glucose and you
When you hear the word insulin, you may think of a drug taken by people who have diabetes. While this is true, what you may not know is that insulin is one of the many hormones created in the human body. Insulin is important to the body. It allows blood sugar (or glucose) to get into cells to provide them with energy. When you eat, your body breaks down food into glucose in your small intestine. This is your body’s source of energy for energy for everything it does, from working and thinking to exercising and healing.
Glucose travels through your bloodstream, looking for individual cells that need energy. For glucose to get into the cells, it requires insulin. Insulin is the key that unlocks cells for glucose to enter and deliver energy. When insulin arrives, it signals the cell to activate glucose transporters. These transporters pull glucose through cell walls. When glucose moves into the cell, it delivers energy!
Insulin Deficiency
Insulin is normally produced in the pancreas by specialized cells called beta-cells. When glucose enters your bloodstream, the pancreas matches it with the right amount of insulin to move glucose into your cells, in people with diabetes, this process doesn’t work as it should. In type 1 diabetes, scientists believe the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys beta-cells in the pancreas, a person with type 1 diabetes loses the ability to produce insulin. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas is not producing enough insulin to meet the body’s needs. Over time, the amount of insulin typically becomes less and less.
Insulin Resistance
In some type 2 diabetes patients, cells build up a resistance to insulin. Even through there may be insulin in the bloodstream, it is not enough to unlock cells to allow glucose to enter. As a result, it takes more insulin to find the right key to unlock the cell for glucose. This makes it more difficult for cells to get the energy they need.
The Effects of Diabetes
When glucose can’t get into cells, either because there isn’t enough insulin or because the body is resisting it, glucose begins to build up in the bloodstream. As a result, all that energy is wasted. It does not get to cells where it is needed. Without glucose in your cells, they lack the energy they require to keep your body working. To keep glucose from building up in the bloodstream, an external supply of insulin may be needed.
Diabetes and Injected Insulin
Because people with type 1 diabetes can’t produce their own insulin, they must inject insulin several times every day or receive insulin through an insulin pump. Many people with type 2 diabetes take insulin too. Injected insulin acts on glucose in a similar way to insulin the body would produce if it could. Like the body’s insulin, injected insulin helps reduce the amount of glucose in the bloodstream by getting into cells where it is needed for energy.
Important safety information for insulin
Possible side effects may include blood sugar levels that are too low, injection site reactions. And allergic reactions including inching and rash. Tell your doctor about all other medicines and supplements you are taking because they could change the way insulin works, Glucose monitoring is recommended for all patients with diabetes.
Video 2
Principles of gel filtration chromatography- size exclusion chromatography
Separation in gel filtration chromatography is based on the differences in sizes from biomolecules as they pass through a column packed with a chromatographic medium, which is a gel. Molecules larger than the pores in the gel are unable to diffuse into the gel, and are confined to the solution surrounding the beads. Molecules which range in size between the very big excluded from the gel, and very small can penetrate the pores to varying degrees based on their size. Access to the pores is limited by steric hindrance. If a molecule is smaller than the smallest of the pores in the gel, it will be able to enter the total pore volume.
2026 biochemistry week 2 chapter 3 amino acids.pdf
