Active nuclear transport of chicken lipovitellin-2.

Chicken lipovitellin-2 is a small, approximately 30 kDa yolk protein, derived from the intracellular breakdown of the precursor protein vitellogenin. In principle, lipovitellin-2 is small enough to directly diffuse into the nucleus. Our results, however, demonstrate that its nuclear transport is an active process which can be inhibited by wheat germ agglutinin, chilling, and energy depletion. The N-terminal sequence analysis identifies chicken lipovitellin-2 beginning at Ala1544 in the C-terminal region of vitellogenin yielding of protein of 30,982 Da.