Question

The conversion of porcine insulin to human insulin is achieved by ____________ reaction.

(a) hydrogenation

(b) transpeptidation

(c) kinetically controlled synthesis

(d) decomposition

I had been asked this question during an internship interview.

My doubt is from Recent Advances topic in chapter Recent Advances in Enzyme Technology of Enzyme Technology

Answer 1

Right answer is (b) transpeptidation

The best explanation: The conversion of porcine insulin to human insulin is achieved by transpeptidation reaction which replaces C-terminal alanine (β30) residue by a threonine by use of trypsin in an aqueous solution with an organic co-solvent. The protective group can be simply removed later by mild hydrolysis and the product purified by silica gel chromatography.