Distribution of pancreatic polypeptide-like immunoreactivity in rat tissues.

The distribution of pancreatic polypeptide (PP)-like immunoreactivity (LI) in rat tissue was determined by a specific radioimmunoassay (RIA) after extraction with boiling 1 N acetic acid. The concentration of PP-LI in the ventral area of the pancreas (0.917 +/- 0.106 micrograms/g tissue) was about 10 times greater than that in the dorsal area of the pancreas (0.085 +/- 0.006 micrograms/g tissue). Extrapancreatic PP-LI was present in the colon (0.034 +/- 0.010 micrograms/g tissue) and rectum (0.019 +/- 0.001 micrograms/g tissue). The remainder of the gastrointestinal tract, the lung, kidney, liver, spleen, heart, adrenal gland, and central nervous system contained no measurable PP-LI. Reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography analysis of the PP-LI materials from the pancreas, colon, and rectum revealed one peak which corresponds to the rat PP standard, under conditions of elution which clearly separated PP, NPY, PYY. These results show that distribution of PP-LI in the rat is different from other known distributions in the PP family of peptides.