The interleukin-1 receptor binds the human interleukin-1 alpha precursor but not the interleukin-1 beta precursor.

Both IL-1 alpha and IL-1 beta are initially translated as approximately Mr 30,000 polypeptides and processed to approximately Mr 17,500 prior to, or during, release from macrophages. The current study utilizes an in vitro transcription-translation system to produce these four forms of IL-1 directly from cloned cDNAs, in order to investigate the relative receptor binding and biological activities of the proteins. The data show that the initial translation product from IL-1 beta mRNA must be processed in order to bind to the IL-1 receptor and hence express biological activity. By contrast, the initial translation product of IL-1 alpha mRNA can bind to the IL-1 receptor without further proteolytic processing. These data suggest that the IL-1 biological activity previously associated with proteins having Mr values in the range 30,000-40,000 is due to IL-1 alpha gene products.