Roles of aspartic acid 15 and 21 in glucagon action: receptor anchor and surrogates for aspartic acid 9.

The discovery of aspartic acid at position 9 in glucagon to be a critical residue for transduction has spurred renewed efforts to identify other strategic residues in the peptide sequence that dictate either receptor binding or biological activity. It also became apparent from further studies that Asp9 operates in conjunction with His1 in the activation mechanism that follows binding to the glucagon receptor. Indeed, it was later demonstrated that the protonatable histidine imidazole is important for transduction. It is likely that the interaction of a positively charged histidine 1 with a negatively charged aspartic acid 9 might be part of the triggering step at the molecular level. Two other aspartic acid residues in glucagon are capable of assuming a similar role, namely that of contributing to an electrostatic attraction with histidine via a negative carboxylate. These studies were conducted to investigate the role of aspartic acid 15 and 21 in glucagon action. Evidence reported here, gathered from 31 replacement analogs, supports the idea that in the absence of the requisite carboxyl group at position 9, histidine utilizes Asp21 or Asp15 as a compensatory site. Asp15 was also found to be indispensable for binding and may serve to tether the hormone to the receptor protein at the binding site. It is also demonstrated that these new findings promote the design of better glucagon antagonists.