ABSTRACT
The disulfide arrangement of yeast derived human insulin-like growth factor I (yIGF-I) was determined using a combination of Staphylococcus aureus V8 protease mapping, fast-atom-bombardment mass spectrometry as well as amino acid sequence and composition analysis. Three disulfide bridges were found between the following cysteine residues: Cys6-Cys48, Cys47-Cys52 and Cys18-Cys61. IGF-I isolated from human plasma (pIGF-I) was found to have an identical disulfide configuration. A yeast-derived isomeric form of IGF-I (yisoIGF-I) exhibited an altered disulfide arrangement: Cys6-Cys47, Cys48-Cys52 and Cys18-Cys61. Radioreceptor analysis of pIGF-I and yIGF-I showed high specific activity, 20,000 U/mg. However, yisoIGF-I demonstrated a severely reduced ability to bind to the IGF-I receptor (19%) and was less potent in provoking a mitogenic response in Balb/C 3T3 fibroblasts (50% at doses 10-100 ng/ml). The data demonstrate the importance of correct disulfide arrangement in IGF-I for full biological activity.
Subject(s)
Disulfides/chemistry , Insulin-Like Growth Factor I/chemistry , Amino Acid Sequence , Animals , Cells, Cultured , Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid , Cystine/analysis , Cystine/chemistry , DNA/biosynthesis , Fibroblasts/metabolism , Humans , Insulin-Like Growth Factor I/isolation & purification , Insulin-Like Growth Factor I/pharmacology , Mice , Mice, Inbred BALB C , Molecular Sequence Data , Peptide Fragments/chemistry , Peptide Fragments/isolation & purification , Radioligand Assay , Recombinant Proteins/chemistry , Saccharomyces cerevisiae/metabolism , Serine Endopeptidases/metabolism , Spectrometry, Mass, Fast Atom Bombardment , Trypsin/metabolismABSTRACT
Recombinant DNA derived human growth hormone (rhGH), Genotropin, has been expressed in E. coli cells as a pre-hormone, where the heat stable enterotoxin II signal peptide (STII) was linked to hGH to get secretion of the hormone to the periplasmatic space. The pre-hormone was efficiently cleaved during secretion, by an endogenous signal peptidase generating the correct N-terminal (Phe) end as shown by protein sequence analysis. The purity of rhGH was studied by SDS-PAGE, in combination with laser densitometry and HI-HPLC. These techniques showed that the level of modified rhGH forms, e.g. aggregated and proteolytically cleaved (16 and 6 kDa) in the preparation was in the 0.5-1% range. Furthermore, evidence that the correct disulphide bonds (Cys53-Cys165; Cys182-Cys189) were formed in rhGH during secretion has been shown by a combination of tryptic fingerprint and amino acid analysis. CD-spectroscopic analysis suggested an identical secondary structure to that of pituitary derived human growth hormone (pit-hGH). Isoelectric focusing revealed an isoelectric point (pI) for rhGH of 5.0 similar to pit-hGH and in excellent agreement with the theoretical value 5.1, based on the primary sequence. Finally, an apparent molecular weight of 22,000 was obtained for rhGH, by SDS-PAGE. All these physico-chemical studies suggest that rhGH is structurally identical to pit-hGH, somatotropin.
