Identification of the dipteran Leu-callatostatin peptide family: Characterisation of the prohormone gene from Calliphora vomitoria and Lucilia cuprina

The prohormone gene encoding the Leu-callatostatin peptides has been isolated from a Calliphora vomitoria genomic DNA. Library and its homologue was cloned from genomic and cDNA libraries of another blowfly species, Lucilia caprina. Gene and prohormone structure and organisation are essentially identical in the two species. The Leu-callatostatin gene consists of at least 3 exons. The prohormone is encoded on exons two and three and the two blocks of putative Leu-callatostatin peptides are carried on separate exons. It is 180 amino-acids long, begins with a short signal peptide and contains two blocks of tandemly arranged Leu-callatostatin peptides separated by an acidic spacer region. The prohormone contains 5 copies of the C-terminal sequence - YXFGL characteristic of the Leu-callatostatin family. Complete endoproteolytic processing at all possible pairs of basic amino acids would generate 5 different Leu-callatostatin octapeptides. Two larger Leu-callatostatins could be released if processing was not complete at two of the sites. None of the 3 peptides encoded in the first block was identified in previous purification studies of the callatostatin peptides. The second block, located at the carboxyl end of the prohormone, contains two peptide sequences identical to the previously isolated Leu-callatostatins 1 and 4. The absence of independent copies of Leu-callatostatins 2 and 3 on the prohormone establishes that endoproteolytic cleavage of the precursor does not invariably proceed to completion and that Leu-callatostatin 2 must be derived by N-terminal processing of the parent peptide Leu-callatostatin I. Reverse transcriptase PCR analysis of mRNA from brain and midgut, the two major sites of Leu-callatostatin expression, shows that the prohormone sequence at these two sites is identical, ruling out the possibility that different populations of peptides are expressed in these two tissues as a result of alternative RNA splicing.