Yanaihara N, Yanaihara C, Zhang T, Hoshino M, Iguchi K, Mochizuki T
Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, University of Shizuoka School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Japan.
Arch Histol Cytol. 1989;52 Suppl:49-54. doi: 10.1679/aohc.52.suppl_49.
Although recent advances in gene technology have made it possible to produce peptides and proteins by the recombinant technique, chemical synthesis either by the solution or by the solid-phase technique is still only a method of choice for the syntheses of a brain-gut hormone and its superagonist and/or antagonist. In addition, synthetic replicates of brain-gut hormones, their analogus and fragments or their precursor-related peptides are important haptenic immunogens to produce region-specific antisera to the respective peptides. In the present study, antisera against proglucagon and pro-LH-RH related peptides were proved to be useful not only for identifying hormone-producing cells, but also for demonstrating the post-translational biosynthetic processing in the cells. For galanin, a novel brain-gut hormone, have structural similarity in its C-terminal region to tachykinins, a monoclonal antibody against synthetic porcine galanin (1-15) was prepared for immunohistochemical study. This monoclonal antibody was found to recognize specifically galanin-producing cells and not to cross-react with any of tachykinins examined. These observations indicate that monoclonal antibodies are highly useful for identifying cells possessing a brain-gut hormone containing structures common to those of different known peptides.
