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This topic takes on average 55 minutes to read.

There are a number of interactive features in this resource:

Topic last updated: 30 Sept 2021

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Diabetes 16+

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What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a condition where the amount of glucose in the blood is too high because the body cannot use it properly. The full name for this disorder is diabetes mellitus. The disorder is more commonly known as diabetes and this will be used throughout the resource.

Regulating blood glucose

Two hormones are involved in the regulation of glucose in the blood: insulin and glucagon. Both are produced by specialised cells in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. Diabetes is triggered when a person stops producing insulin or their body does not respond to it normally.

This resource follows on from the 14-16 resource on diabetes.

Below we see two different representations of the three-dimensional structure of insulin.

  • The ribbon depiction shows a smooth curvature of the polypeptide chain, which works great to observe secondary structure elements.
  • The surface depiction shows the surface of the protein, which is determined by the structure of all the amino acids forming the protein and that are accessible to the solvent and can interact with it.
Insulin Ribbon Crop
Insulin Surf
Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes
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