Question

Banting and Best successfully purified insulin from the pancreas of
A. Guinea Pig
B. Dog
C. Cow
D. Buffalo

Answer 1

Insulin is a peptide hormone that is produced in beta cells of the pancreatic islets. The role of insulin is to maintain the blood glucose level by absorbing excess glucose in the liver, muscles, and adipose tissue.

Complete Answer:
- As we are well known, diabetes mellitus is a disorder in which high blood sugar is present. This is due to the deficiency in the levels of insulin. Insulin helps in the absorption of the excess level of blood sugar in the liver, adipose tissue, and muscle where the glucose is stored as glycogen.
- The deficiency of insulin or the inability of beta cells of pancreatic cells to produce insulin leads to an excess of blood sugar level.
- So, we require the major treatment of diabetes by giving insulin injection shots to maintain the blood glucose level. One of the major discoveries of insulin was done by Banting and Best for which they received Nobel Prize.
- In 1920, Frederick Banting and Charles H. Best discovered the hormone insulin from the pancreas of dogs. Firstly, they used this hormone on a diabetic dog and they found that the level of glucose was decreased to normal in the dog’s blood.
- Then, they purified this insulin from the dog’s pancreas and injected it into a boy suffering from diabetes. This was a great breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes as earlier diabetes was controlled through diet by breaking the blood sugar and also reducing the intake of food items which makes the diabetic patient weak. This discovery of insulin helped diabetic people to fight against the disease.
- Since the dog’s pancreas was used to prepare insulin. The level of blood glucose when fluctuating causes diabetes. These researchers detached the hormone insulin from the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas by different processes and refined it.

So, the correct answer is ‘B’.

Note: Now, we know that insulin is the major treatment for diabetes mellitus because diabetes is caused due to an insufficient level of insulin in the blood which results in high blood glucose levels. Thus, the Insulin hormone is important to maintain the blood glucose level.