Incoming links: Insulin
Ciro Santilli defines a "model protein" as a protein which has been significantly used in the history of protein science, in analogy to the term model organism.
Key characteristics of model proteins include:
- they are easy to obtain and are stable
- they are important to medical applications
- they are small and easier to understand for early studies
Important model proteins include:
- insulin: as a peptide hormone, this was small. Also it was useful and widely available even at pharmacies, The Eighth Day of Creation says you could get it a Boots, a major British pharmacy chain, and as such was a natural choice for the first sequencing by Frederick Sanger published in 1951
- hemoglobin
The Amino-acid Sequence in the Phenylalanyl Chain of Insulin Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-06-17
This is where he started publishing the sequence of insulin. The paper gives the full B-chain sequence, which it tentatively calls the "Phenylalanyl Chain" because it starts with a Phenylalanyl.
The official link seems to be: portlandpress.com/biochemj/article/49/4/463/47212/The-amino-acid-sequence-in-the-phenylalanyl-chain It seems to explain the methods very well at first glance, with lots of schematics.