Pancreatic proglucagon processing: isolation and structures of glucagon and glucagon-like peptide from gene I.

The anglerfish endocrine pancreas expresses two different genes for preproglucagon. The regions of the two proglucagons that correspond to glucagon have different sequences, as do the two glucagon-like peptides (GLPs). The products derived from processing the more abundant proglucagon-II have recently been determined. However, it was not known whether proglucagon-I was processed to similar products. The two major biologically active products of preproglucagon-I processing (glucagon-I and GLP-I) have now been purified to homogeneity. Their structures were determined using automated gas phase Edman degradation, tryptic mapping, and fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry. The preproglucagon-I-processing sites were identified. Glucagon-I represents residues 53-81, and GLP-I corresponds to preproglucagon-I-(91-124) (numbering from the initiator Met).