AN INVESTIGATION ON PRO-OPIOMELANOCORTIN AND PROCESSED PEPTIDES FROM THE TELEOST FISH PROCHILODUS-PLATENSIS

Acid extracts of carefully dissected proadenohypophysis (PA) and metaadenohypophysis (MA) of the teleost Prochilodus platensis were subjected to chromatography in Sephadex G-50 after which several pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) peptides were detected by means of three heterologous RIA systems; .alpha.-MSH, ACTH and .beta.-endorphin. Parallelism among extracts displacement curves ranged from 26% to 95% of those of the standard curves for the different systems employed. In PA chromatograms, peaks of ACTH immunoreactivity (IR) were detected at the positions of 30 kilodalton (K), 20K, 9K, a large 4,5K peak and 2K. Only one peak of .beta.-endorphin IR was detected at 30K. In MA chromatograms, ACTH IR detected similar peaks as in PA runs, but 4,5K peak was much smaller, whereas a large 2K peak roughly coincided with all .alpha.-MSH detected in the chromatograms. .beta.-Endorphin IR was detected mainly as a large peak coinciding with synthetic .beta.-endorphin in MA runs. Bioactivity was detected in both PA and MA 4.5K ACTH peaks, whereas little activity could be demonstrated associated with the 30K, 20K and 9K ACTH IR peaks. Prochilodus PAs and MAs were incubated with tritiated aminoacids and the extracts immunoprecipitated with ACTH, .beta.-endorphin and N-terminal POMC (N-POMC) antisera. The dissociated complexes were run in SDS polyacrylamide slab gel electrophoresis. The triated bands detected confirmed the results obtained with Sephadex chromatography. N-POMC immunoprecipitated peptides were located at 28K, 18K and 9K positions. The first two probably accounted for POMC and the N-POMC/ACTH intermediate respectively; the third corresponded to the mammalian 1-76N-POMC. These results further confirm previous reports about POMC peptides in teleost fishes and add information about their distribution between PA and MA and the presence of large amounts of IR and bioactive ACTH which are adscribed mostly to 4.5K ACTH. The presence of stored POMC and processing intermediates in both PA and MA is also demonstrated.