Hodgkin's Insulin Structure

Hodgkin's insulin structure is the three dimensional atomic structure of the hormone insulin, determined by X-ray crystallography. Dorothy Hodgkin began attempting to crystallize and X-ray insulin in 1934, but the molecule's size and complexity put the calculations beyond what could be done by hand, and the project became tractable only as electronic computers advanced. In 1969, with a team including Marjorie Harding, Guy Dodson and Eleanor Dodson, she published the structure of rhombohedral 2 zinc insulin crystals in Nature, resolving the arrangement of the hormone's atoms after thirty five years of work. The structure showed how six insulin molecules cluster around two zinc ions in the form the hormone takes in storage, underpinning later work on how insulin functions in the body and how it could be engineered to treat diabetes.