INS and Insulin resistance: Chengjun Song et al. showed that sericin was able to increase the signal transduction effect of insulin by increasing the expression levels of key factors involved in insulin resistance (IR), such as insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1), phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) and AKT, in the liver insulin-PI3K/AKT signaling pathway, thereby promoting the synthesis of hepatic glycogen14.