Evidence for the spontaneous formation of interspecies hybrid molecules of human, rat and bovine serum albumins.

Utilizing electrophoretic and gel filtration techniques it was shown that a bovine C-terminal peptic fragment [residues 307-582] spontaneously forms interspecies hybrid molecules with three complementary N-terminal fragments derived from human [residues 1-308; 49-308] and rat [residues 1-308] albumins. The fragments associate with 1:1 stoichiometry to produce an albumin-like complex which has a molecular weight and electrophoretic mobility similar to intact albumin. These data demonstrate, for the first time, that albumin fragments derived from different species associate in a complementary fashion and provide direct evidence that the tertiary structure may be highly conserved.