Diabetes Mellitus Is a Metabolic Disease That Is Characterized by the Buildup

question 31

Multiple Choice

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease that is characterized by the buildup of glucose in the blood, or hyperglycemia. Diabetes results either from the pancreas not being able to produce the hormone insulin (type 1 diabetes) or if the body's cells become resistant to insulin (type 2 diabetes) . Insulin is a protein that binds to receptors on cell surfaces to allow glucose to enter the cell.
In order to manage the disease, type 1 diabetics require frequent insulin injections. Until the 1970s, insulin was obtained from processing the pancreases of large mammals such as cows and pigs; it was then purified for medicinal use. This all changed in the 1970s with the advent of recombinant DNA technology, which allows scientists to insert genes from other species into bacterial plasmids and have bacteria produce proteins from these other species' genes. In 1978, the gene that codes for human insulin was added to a bacterial plasmid and bacteria were used to produce human insulin. These bacteria acted as mini-factories that produced human insulin for type 1 diabetes patients. Today, the production of human insulin from bacteria is commonplace and is a multibillion dollar market for pharmaceutical companies.
-Suppose that the human insulin protein that was produced by the bacteria was much shorter than it should be. Upon further investigation, it was found that the DNA of the human insulin gene had a mutation while in the bacterial cells. What type of mutation could not result in these observations?

• A) nucleotide insertion
• B) silent mutation
• C) nucleotide deletion
• D) nonsense mutation

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Definitions:

Resource Demand Curve

A graph showing the relationship between the price of a resource and the quantity of that resource demanded by firms.

Imperfectly Competitive

A market structure where the conditions for perfect competition are not fully met, including monopolistic competition and oligopoly.

Purely Competitive

A market scenario where there are many buyers and sellers, each has no influence over the price of products, leading to perfect competition.

Marginal Resource Cost

The additional cost incurred by producing one more unit of a product or service, especially in terms of the resources used in its production.