Pancreatic proglucagon processing: isolation and structures of glucagon and glucagon-like peptide from gene I

The anglerfish endocrine pancreas expresses two different genes for preproglucagon. The regions of the two proglucagons that correspond to glucagon have different sequences, as do the two glucagon-like peptides (GLPs). The products derived from processing the more abundant proglucagon-II have recently been determined. However, it was not known whether proglucagon-I was processed to similar products. The two major biologically active products of preproglucagon-I processing (glucagon-I and GLP-I) have now been purified to homogeneity. Their structures were determined using automated gas phase Edman degradation, tryptic mapping, and fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry. The preproglucagon-I-processing sites were identified. Glucagon-I represents residues 53-81, and GLP-I corresponds to preproglucagon-I-(91-124) (numbering from the initiator Met).