title: The conversion of Met-enkephalin-Arg6, Phe7 to Met-enkephalin in rabbit ear artery.
abstract: We studied the opioid agonist activities of met-enkephalin-Arg6, Phe7 heptapeptide (ME-A,P) and its D-Ala2-analogue in several isolated organs including rabbit ear artery (ART), guinea-pig ileum (GPI) mouse-, rat and rabbit vas deferens preparation. Both heptapeptides followed the in vitro activity pattern of met-enkephalin (ME). There was a significant parallelism in the sensitivity of ART and mouse vas deferens to opioid peptides. In ART, ME-A,P must be converted by a captopril sensitive enzyme to exert opioid agonist action. Incubation of heptapeptide with membranes prepared from rabbit ear artery revealed the captopril-sensitive enzymic conversion of ME-AP to ME as detected by high voltage paper electrophoresis.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001158:Arteries / Q000378:metabolism*; D001681:Biological Assay; D004423:Ear; D004744:Enkephalin, Methionine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000494:pharmacology; D011817:Rabbits
chemical_list: D004744:Enkephalin, Methionine; C027511:enkephalin-Met, Arg(6)-Phe(7)-