Which method produces human insulin in bacteria using genetic techniques?

• A. Fermentation technology
• B. Recombinant DNA technology
• C. Chemical synthesis
• D. Synthetic biology

Answer: (B)

Producing human insulin in bacteria relies on moving the human insulin gene into a bacterial host so the microorganism can manufacture the protein. This is recombinant DNA technology—the creation of new DNA constructs that encode insulin and are inserted into a plasmid, transformed into bacteria, and expressed to yield insulin that can be purified. Fermentation helps scale up the production by growing large numbers of the engineered bacteria, but the essential genetic method is recombinant DNA technology. Chemical synthesis isn’t practical for a protein of insulin’s size and required folding and disulfide bonds, and synthetic biology is a broader field that isn’t the specific traditional method used here.