A study carried out in a prestigious Venezuelan university led by professors Alexander Gil and Ledia Triana, researchers of the Dr. Francisco J. Triana Alonso Biomedical Research Institute (BIOMED-UC) has made this theory evident.
The treatments applied in Diabetes Mellitus (various drugs and human insulin obtained by recombinant DNA) have as a final objective to try to compensate the deficiency of insulin or its action. To achieve this goal it is necessary to know the mechanisms of genetic regulation of the hormone, which until now have not been fully clarified. In this sense, various human and mouse cellular systems have been used, although they have always had the disadvantage of difficult to obtain, manipulate and maintain.
Some studies on the hormonal variation in the evolutionary chain determined that certain microorganisms, such as fungi and bacteria, responded to human insulin in a similar way as mammalian cells do. This capacity seems to be related to the variation over time of predecessor substances and structurally similar to insulin detected in different fungi and bacteria, in addition to having the same functionality as the human hormone. These results converted the microorganisms that respond to insulin as ideal cellular systems to study their molecular effects. The advantages would be represented by its easy obtaining and handling.
The microbial systems are ideal to study in detail the differences of the effects of commercial insulins and obtain conclusions about their impact on mammalian cells, and ultimately, on the treatments applied to diabetic patients with said hormones, allowing to establish possible corrective mechanisms.
Until now, Prof. Alexander Gil, Coordinator of the Chair of Clinical Biochemistry at the School of Biochemistry at the University of Carabobo, points out, “One of the important aspects of the study of the effect of insulin on microorganisms is the resistance that the hormone It confers certain antifungals and antibiotics and the possible relationship of this fact with the severity and resistance of infections in diabetic patients. It is also suggested that the severity of infections in diabetic patients could be related to a direct effect of the hormone on microorganisms, due to the hyperinsulinemia states that these individuals suffer. ”
What was this study?
In this investigation, the mitogenic capacity of the modified insulin Lispro was analyzed on the strain ATCC 25922 of Escherichia coli in comparative form with the regular sequence insulin. The cultures were carried out in Luria Bertani medium (LB) with various concentrations of commercial insulins (0.1-2.0 IU / mL) and glucose (1-5 mM). Cell growth was followed by A600 or cell count. Both insulins, between 0.1 and 1 IU / mL, stimulated growth with different intensities, observing the maximum effect at 0.5 IU / mL: 60% regular insulin and 51% Lispro in the logarithmic and prelogarithmic phases respectively, In addition, Lispro had 1.6 times the initial rate of proliferation, indicating faster action and greater mitogenic capacity.
What did these results indicate?
In addition to the purely biochemical interest in the mechanisms of hormonal action, the results obtained in this work, showed that both hormones favor the action of glucose in the bacterial cells, and the main difference possibly lies in its ability to act on the reorganization of the flow metabolic or between gluconeogenic and glycolytic activity. Lispro seems to have greater potency to act on a metabolic pathway and this would cause greater difficulty for the reorganization of the metabolic flux towards another signaling route. The results suggest that microorganisms responsible for infectious diseases in patients with Diabetes Mellitus could be stimulated to grow by hormonal treatments, including Lispro. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which different hormones affect bacterial cells to develop better antibacterial treatments.
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