This is a time-lapse video of students building an insulin molecule. Insulin is a protein hormone that regulates the level of sugar in the blood. The structure contains 51 amino acids and a total of 788 atoms. Many of the carbon atoms are chiral.
The 3D structure of insulin was originally solved in 1969 by the UK chemist Dorothy Hodgkin. Her research group used a special technique called x-ray diffraction. The entire project took 35 years' of hard work!
