Abstract
The islets were morphologically identified by Paul Langerhans in 1869. Later in the century, Minkowski and von Mering established the endocrine function of the pancreas by showing that pancreatectomy resulted in diabetes. This laid the groundwork for the momentous purification of insulin by Banting and colleagues in the early 1920s. Since then, insulin has played an important role not only in the management of diabetes, but also in the development of the tools of basic science, such as protein sequencing, crystallization, radioimmunoassay, and molecular biology.
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McClain, D.A. (1997). The Endocrine Pancreas. In: Conn, P.M., Melmed, S. (eds) Endocrinology. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-641-6_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-641-6_22
Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5137-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-59259-641-6
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