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About Donald Steiner, M. D.
Dr. Steiner received his M. D. in 1956 at the University of Chicago School of Medicine and subsequently interned at the King County Hospital in Seattle. His interest in insulin developed during a three-year period of post-doctoral training in the laboratory of R. H. Williams at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His studies there were concerned with the mechanism of respiratory inhibition produced by the oral hypoglycemic biguanide derivatives, the induction of severe ketoacidotic diabetes in rats after alloxan and the investigation of direct effects of insulin upon anabolic events in the liver in diabetic animals. After joining the faculty in biochemistry at the University of Chicago in 1960, Dr. Steiner demonstrated that insulin-associated changes in the activities of many enzymes of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in the liver were preceded by stimulation of the synthesis of new RNA and that under some conditions the anabolic stimulus of insulin was of such magnitude that massive DNA synthesis and cell replication resulted as well. Subsequent studies in his laboratory of insulin binding to hepatocytes and perfused livers led to the first demonstration of receptor-mediated uptake and degradation of insulin, an important mechanism in the in vivo metabolism of the hormone.
His investigation of insulin biosynthesis in a human islet cell adenoma, starting in 1965, led to the discovery of proinsulin and opened a new area of protein chemistry concerned with the processing of precursor proteins. More recent studies in his laboratory have focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the processing of both pre and pro proteins and on the structure, evolution, and mechanisms of regulation of the genes for insulin and related growth factors.
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