Genes encoding mammalian neuroendocrine peptides: strategies toward their identification and analysis

During the last five years, cDNAs and genes encoding more than 20 neuroendocrine peptides have been cloned. The information gleaned from these genes has been largely structural to this point, and illustrates the great versatility of neuroendocrine genes in generating diverse sets of bioactive peptides. An ongoing contribution of the application of recombinant DNA techniques to the neuroendocrine system promises to be the identification of novel peptides; it will require a concerted effort to determine their physiological functions. The application of recombinant DNA to the study of expression and regulation of neuroendocrine genes is still in its infancy, but a variety of newly emerging techniques promise to be useful for these approaches. Although we have considered the application of recombinant DNA only to the cloning and analysis of neuroendocrine peptide genes, molecular biology will clearly also have a major future impact in investigating aspects of other molecules involved in neuropeptide action, such as processing enzymes and peptide receptors.