Pro-region of neurotrophins determines the processing efficiency.
Neurotrophins are synthesized as precursors called pro-neurotrophins and then mature neurotrophins are formed proteolytically from them. Recent findings revealed that pro- and mature neurotrophins elicit opposite functional effects on cell survival, highlighting the importance of this processing step. Nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) belong to the neurotrophin family and are mutually homologous, but BDNF is less efficiently processed. In order to find the reason for this, we examined some possibilities by using PC12 cells, and found that the pro-region, especially the last half of it, affected very much the processing efficiency of these neurotrophins.
Nomoto
Hiroshi
H
Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Gifu Pharmaceutical University, Gifu 502-8585, Japan. hnomoto@gifu-pu.ac.jp
Takaiwa
Masatoshi
M
Mouri
Akihiro
A
Furukawa
Shoei
S
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D019208:Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D015870:Gene Expression / Q000502:physiology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020932:Nerve Growth Factor / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D009414:Nerve Growth Factors / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D016716:PC12 Cells; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D051381:Rats; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
D019208:Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor; D009414:Nerve Growth Factors; D020932:Nerve Growth Factor