The isolation and characterization of rabbit motilin precursor cDNA.

The cDNA sequence of rabbit motilin precursor has been determined. The predicted amino acid sequence indicates that the precursor consists of 133 amino acids and includes a 25 amino acid signal peptide followed by the 22 amino acid motilin sequence and an 86 amino acid motilin associated peptide (MAP). As in the human and porcine precursors, two lysine residues follow motilin in the rabbit sequence. Rabbit motilin shares 64% amino acid sequence identity with human and porcine motilin, and all amino acid substitutions represent conservative changes. Amino acid sequence alignments of the rabbit, human and porcine MAP sequences suggest three functional/structural motifs corresponding to a putative endoproteinase recognition site, a putative PEST site and a potential posttranslational processing recognition element.