Rabbit phosphoglucose isomerase/neuroleukin/autocrine motility factor: cloning via interspecies identity

Phosphoglucose isomerase is the first committed enzyme of glycolysis. The protein also has a variety of biological activities on mammalian cells. The molecular basis of these extracellular functions is unclear, and the high resolution three-dimensional structure of a mammalian enzyme has not been described. We report here the cDNA and protein sequence for phosphoglucose isomerase from rabbit muscle. The sequence was obtained directly by PCR without the need to screen clones from a cDNA library and encoded active enzyme when expressed in bacterial cells. The 558 amino acid rabbit coding sequence is the same length as and highly similar (92% residue identity) to the sequences from human and pig and less so (88%) to the mouse enzyme. Non-conservative amino acid changes between the four mammalian sequences are concentrated in the first 35 and last five residues. The rabbit protein has an additional Cys residue and amino acid changes at five positions otherwise invariant in the mammalian enzymes.