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Lydia Villa-Komaroff's Role In Molecular Biology

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I looked up each molecular biologist and used Wikipedia to get a brief overview of each individual. Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff came my eye because she was part of a team that discovered how bacterial cells can be used to make insulin and I wanted to know more on how the bacteria was able to do this. Villa-Komaroff attended University of Washington in Seattle, majoring in chemistry (United Neighborhood Houses). She was struggling in chemistry and went to her adviser for assistance. Her adviser told her that women don’t belong in chemistry (Makers). So she switched to her major in biology, earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology at Goucher College and a Ph.D in cell biology at MIT (United Neighborhood Houses, Makers). Her focus was on the methods …show more content…

The bacteria are placed into a fermentation tank and begin to produce insulin (United States National Library of Medicine). The insulin is harvested and purified to be used as medicine (United States National Library of Medicine). Her findings greatly impact molecular biology because they were able to grow a hormone outside of the human body. They used the technology of recombinant DNA. This same mechanism can be used to create various medicines to treat specific illnesses. This has great impact in my field of interest which is the medical field. Getting an understanding from her work will enable doctors and scientist to develop treatments for cancer, diabetes, any genetic disorder. Doctors and scientist can work in tandem to get specific genes that generate a protein and provide it to those who are not able to make a specific protein. For example, some people have lactose intolerance like me. Scientist can isolate genes that encode for lactase and insert it into some bacteria. Allow that bacteria to multiply and produce the lactase. That lactase can be harvested and purified to produce a lactase supplement for lactose-intolerant

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