Analysis of the neurohypophyseal components accumulating in the supraoptic nucleus of the rat after injection of colchicine

Somatostatin-28 and pro-ocytocin/neurophysin convertases: basic pair selective endoproteases involved in pro-hormone processing in the rat brain cortex and bovine corpus luteum

Two neuropeptide precursor processing enzyme systems were characterized in the rat brain cortex and bovine neurohypophysis and corpus luteum. The first one combines the action of a 90 kDa endoprotease which cleaves somatostatin-28 before the Arg-Lys doublet and that of an aminopeptidase B-like enzyme. The second system associates the action of a 58 kDa endoprotease cleaving pro-ocytocin/neurophysin (1-20) after the Lys-Arg dibasic moiety and a carboxypeptidase B-like activity. Both systems appear to be located in membrane-limited secretory vesicles of the producing organs, and to exhibit the properties of metallo-enzymes sensitive to divalent cation chelators. In contrast, they do not show the characteristics of serine-proteases and of trypsin-like enzymes. Studies with substrate analogs selectively modified at the basic doublet indicated that the integrity of both basic amino acids is essential but that conformational parameters, probably governed by the amino acid sequences flanking the basic doublet, play an important role. These data will be discussed in relation to a hypothesis on the predicted preferred secondary structure of these restriction loci.

Hypothalamic biosynthesis and transport of neurophysins and their precursors to the rat brain stem

Twenty-four hours after the injection of [35S]cysteine near either the rat paraventricular nuclei or the supraoptic nuclei, the [35S]neurophysin-like proteins of the brain stem were extracted, immunoprecipitated with anti-bovine neurophysins antibodies and analyzed. They consisted essentially of species behaving as neurophysin on sodium dodecyl sulfate--polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. There was a very low percentage of neurophysins precursors which could be characterized in the paraventricular nuclei. In the rats pretreated by colchicine, the [35S]neurophysins were not detected in the brain stem, while they appeared in the paraventricular nuclei indicating that the precursors have been processed and the transport inhibited. These results suggest that: (i) both the biosynthetic and transport events in the hypothalamo-brain stem pathway are comparable to those occurring in the hypothalamo-neurohypophyseal tract; (ii) this pathway originates both from the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei. Moreover, they indicate that processing is essentially complete in the hypothalamus of colchicine-pretreated animals. This provides further support to a model associating enzymes with both the endoplasmic reticulum membranes and the derived corresponding secretory vesicles.