Somatostatin-like material is present in flowering plants.

Extracts of spinach contain somatostatin (SRIF)-related material (6-80 pg/g wet wt). The SRIF-related material, when purified on HPLC, was recovered as two major mol wt forms; one that eluted with a retention time similar to that of synthetic SRIF-28 and reacted in both N- and C-terminal-specific immunoassays, and a second peak that eluted with a retention time similar to that of SRIF-14 and reacted only in the C-terminal immunoassays. The purified material was active in a sensitive bioassay, and the bioactivity was neutralized in the presence of anti-SRIF antiserum. Since we have previously described the presence of similar material in bacteria, we also tested extracts of the flowering plant Lemna gibba G3, which was grown under sterile conditions. The Lemna extracts also had SRIF-related material (3.0 pg/g wet wt). Since plants are probably derived evolutionarily from unicellular organisms, the presence of SRIF-like material in higher plants gives support for the hypothesis that vertebrate-type peptide hormones have early evolutionary origins.