Molecular Cloning and Sequencing of a Rat Preprogastrin Complementary Deoxyribonucleic Acid*

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Abstract
Gastrin biosynthesis involves a complex series of posttranslational modifications; their elucidation requires a knowledge of the structure of the gastrin precursor. The complete structure of rat preprogastrin was deduced from the nucleotide sequence of a full length cDNA clone isolated from a rat antral cDNA library. Northern blot hybridization analysis of rat antral RNA together with human antral RNA, reveals a single mRNA species of approximately 670 bases. Comparison of this sequence with those of porcine and human gastrin reveals extensive (73%) homology in the gastrin coding region as well as short regions of conserved nucleotides in the noncoding regions. The rat sequence encodes a preprogastrin of 104 amino acids which consists of a signal peptide, a 37 amino acid prosegment; and the gastrin 34 sequence, followed by a glycine (the amide donor), and flanked by pairs of arginine residues. Cleavage at an internal pair of lysine residues yields gastrin 17. Unlike the human and porcine sequences, rat preprogastrin contains a 9 amino acid carboxy-terminal extension peptide (-Ser-Ala-Glu-Glu-Glu-Asp-Gln-Tyr-Asn) which is homologous to the midportion of gastrin 17 including the site of tyrosine sulfation.