F J Ballard

Chicken insulin-like growth factor-I: Amino acid sequence, radioimmunoassay, and plasma levels between strains and during growth

Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) has been purified from chicken serum and sequenced. The peptide has eight amino acid substitutions when compared with human IGF-I: serine26, leucine38, histidine39, histidine40, lysine41, glutamine50, isoleucine64, and proline67. Chicken IGF-I (cIGF-I) has been measured using a radioimmunoassay with a human IGF-I (hIGF-I) standard and an antibody raised against hIGF-I. In this assay the cross-reactivity of cIGF-I was approximately 50% with respect to hIGF-I and the cross-reactivity of chicken IGF-II was 1.7% with respect to chicken IGF-I. To determine whether binding proteins in chicken plasma can artifactually interfere with IGF-I measurements as they do in mammals, chicken plasma was fractionated by molecular sieve chromatography at acid pH. When the fractions corresponding to the binding protein region were included in the IGF-I radioimmunoassay, essentially no apparent IGF-I was detected, indicating that the binding proteins did not interfere. This result, together with the finding that IGF-I in acid-ethanol extracts of chicken plasma produced parallel dose-response curves to pure cIGF-I and hIGF-I, allows the reliable measurement of cIGF-I in such extracts. The concentrations of IGF-I in plasma from male birds increased two- to threefold between 1 and 7 weeks after hatching to achieve 30-45 ng/ml. Smaller increases were found in female chickens from a higher value at 1 week. No diurnal pattern of IGF-I levels could be detected. In 4-week-old birds, the plasma concentration of the peptide fell from nearly 40 to 15 ng/ml after 24 hr of starvation and to 9 ng/ml 20 hr later. These effects are very similar to those described for mammals and strongly suggest that the regulation of IGF-I is conserved during evolution, notwithstanding the lower plasma concentrations of the growth factor in chickens.

Inactivation of Cytosol Enzymes by a Liver Membrane Protein

Non-proteolytic inactivation reactions have been suggested to play an important role in determining the relative rates of enzyme degradation within cells. An inactivation factor is present at high specific activity in hepatocyte plasma membrane which inactivates cytosol enzymes at rates roughly proportional to their rates of degradation in vivo. This factor has been purified about 100-fold and has similar catalytic selectivity to the crude factor. The inactivation reaction is accelerated by disulphide compounds and can be partially reversed by thiols. Furthermore, inactivation of enzymes is accompanied by a loss of measurable thiols in the enzymes. From these experiments it is concluded that the inactivation factor carries out a disulphide attack on surface thiol groups in cytosol enzymes leading to the formation of mixed disulphides which have lost catalytic activity. The inactive enzymes may be substrates for lysosomal or non-lysosomal proteolysis.

Degradation of horseradish peroxidase after microinjection into mammalian cells

Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) has been microinjected into mammalian cells in tissue culture by the erythrocyte ghost-mediated technique. This protein was selected because it can be localized and quantified after injection by cytochemical and spectrophotometric methods. HRP labeled by reductive methylation retained full catalytic activity, was efficiently loaded into erythrocyte ghosts, and did not associate to a significant degree with ghost membranes. A combination of cytochemical staining and autoradiography established that HRP injected into rat L6 myoblasts, HE(39)L human diploid fibroblasts, or HeLa cells was intracellular and uniformly distributed throughout the cell, while cell lysis techniques showed that the catalytically active HRP was not membrane bound. Inactivation of labeled HRP after injection paralleled the disappearance of the 40-kDa polypeptide, and was always more rapid than its overall degradation. This difference was associated with a pool of water-insoluble radioactivity in the injected cells. This material was of smaller molecular size than the native protein: many labeled peptides were detected in the range of 10 to 38 kDa. By the use of inhibitors of autophagic proteolysis or lysosomal function it was established that HRP degradation was not subjected quantitatively to the same regulatory processes as the average endogenous protein labeled in the same cultures.

Changes in Protein Synthesis and Degradation Involved in Enzyme Accumulation in Differentiating Liver

The growth of a mammal from embryo to adult is accompanied by differentiation so that non-specific cells eventually give rise to specific tissues. As part of this developmental process a series of sequential changes occur with the gradual attainment of the mature function characteristic of a tissue. The foetal rat liver, for example, although somewhat similar histologically to adult liver, has very few of the specific functions carried out by the mature organ. Gluconeogenesis, urea formation, amino acid degradation, glucuronide formation, sugar phosphate transformations and drug detoxication reactions are absent or essentially so in the foetal rat liver, and appear during development at birth or at weaning (Schimke and Doyle, 1970; Ballard, 1971). Although little is known about the natural stimuli for the appearance of these pathways, it is a general finding that the pathways become functional when rate-limiting enzymes appear for the first time. Thus an essential problem in understanding development is to resolve the factors responsible for specific gene expression: how are the respective genes repressed during the early growth of foetal liver and what changes initiate gene expression at a particular developmental stage?