Isolation and cDNA cloning of somatolactin in rabbitfish (Siganus guttatus)

We report the isolation and cDNA cloning of somatolactin (SL) from rabbitfish, Siganus guttatus. Rabbitfish SL was isolated from an alkaline extract of the pituitary glands by gel filtration chromatography on Sephadex G-100 and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. SL was monitored by immunoblotting with flounder SL antiserum. The preparation (yield: 0.86 mg/g wet tissues) contained two immunoreactive bands of 24 and 28 kDa on SDS-PAGE. Overlapping partial cDNA clones corresponding to teleost SLs were amplified by PCR from single-strand cDNA from pituitary glands. Excluding the poly(A) tail, rabbitfish SL cDNA is 1605 bp long. It contains a 693-bp open reading frame encoding a signal peptide of 24 amino acids (aa) and a mature protein of 207 aa. Rabbitfish SL has two possible N-glycosylation sites at positions 11 and 121 and seven half Cys residues. The deduced amino acid sequence shows over 80% identity with those of advanced teleosts like sea bream, red drum, and flounder, 76% with the salmonids, 57% with the eel, and 46% with the goldfish SL.