{"doi":"10.1016/j.jlr.2021.100132","title":"The insulin centennial—100 years of milestones in biochemistry","abstract":"A hundred years ago, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, in the laboratory of John MacLeod at the University of Toronto, performed a historic experiment demonstrating that an extract from pancreata in which the pancreatic ducts had been ligated to allow isolation of the “internal secretion” lowered blood glucose in dogs. This experiment broke ground for a fertile field that now extends into essentially all branches of physiology, endocrinology, biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, and molecular biology. This centennial is being celebrated by the retelling of this extraordinary story and the research triumphs that mark the trajectory to the present. Several journals have already paid tribute to these events (1Sims E.K. Carr A.L.J. Oram R.A. DiMeglio L.A. Evans-Molina C. 100 years of insulin: Celebrating the past, present and future of diabetes therapy.Nat. Med. 2021; 27: 1154-1164Crossref PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar, 2Fralick M. Zinman B. The discovery of insulin in Toronto: Beginning a 100 year journey of research and clinical achievement.Diabetologia. 2021; 64: 947-953Crossref PubMed Scopus (8) Google Scholar, 3Lewis G.F. Brubaker P.L. The discovery of insulin revisited: Lessons for the modern era.J. Clin. Invest. 2021; 131e142239Crossref PubMed Scopus (5) Google Scholar, 4White M.F. Kahn C.R. Insulin action at a molecular level - 100 years of progress.Mol. Metab. 2021; 52: 101304Crossref PubMed Scopus (1) Google Scholar, 5Kahn C.R. 100 Years of progress in understanding insulin, its mechanism of action, and its roles in disease and diabetes therapy.Mol. Metab. 2021; 52: 101318Crossref PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar). We wish to highlight the role of our two ASBMB journals, The Journal of Biological Chemistry and The Journal of Lipid Research in publishing impactful biochemical studies in this field. We have selected 27 articles for republication. The choice of so few articles from a vast literature was very difficult and somewhat arbitrary, but it allows us to highlight a subset of the many great discoveries that advanced our understanding of insulin and to recognize the remarkable insights of early pioneers of this field. Many of the most important articles in the field were published in other journals and are therefore not included in this series. What comes across in reading the earlier publications in this field is how prescient were the insights and speculations of the brilliant scientists who launched and advanced this field. In threading together these stories, we have gained a new appreciation of the hard work, zealous dedication, and brilliant insights of the scientists involved in this quest. Although diabetes is principally defined by hyperglycemia, the role of lipids in diabetes has been a dominant theme in this field and we point to several highlights in this story. With the realization that a substance produced in the pancreas is capable of lowering blood glucose and is likely missing in people with diabetes, it became critical to purify and identify this substance. The first purification of insulin, from the cow pancreas, was performed by the Canadian biochemist James Collip and was used to treat the first human patient with diabetes, Leonard Thompson, in 1922. American scientists were also working on purifying insulin. The first article on insulin that was published in the JBC is a study of precipitation methods by Kimball and Murlin in 1923 (6Kimball C.P. Murlin J.R. Aqueous extracts of pancreas. 3. Some precipitation reactions of insulin.J. Biol. Chem. 1923; 58: 337-348Abstract Full Text PDF Google Scholar). They tested a series of alcohols, acetone, ether, toluene, xylene, trichloroacetic acid, and several salts. The method was to centrifuge the precipitate, resuspend in water, and immediately inject into rabbits. What is most remarkable about the article is how inconclusive it was regarding insulin’s properties. It did not promote any one precipitation method and ended by saying, “With regard to t","journal":"Journal of Lipid Research","year":2021,"id":207878,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9335,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":794458,"name":"Qi-Qun Tang","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":299555,"name":"Karin Bornfeldt","orcid":"0000-0001-9208-6523","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":321086,"name":"Alan Attie","orcid":"0000-0002-0568-2261","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":136,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:53.662668Z","pmid":"34717951","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}