Partial purification and characterisation of a 31 kDalton putative enkephalin precursor from guinea pig striatum

The presence of several putative precursors for Met-enkephalin (ME) and Leu-enkephalin (LE) has been demonstrated in guinea pig striatal extracts. The major high molecular weight (Mr) species (31000) contained 9% of the total ME-immunoreactivity (IR) after digest. This species has been partially purified and characterized using sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and nitrocellulose blotting techniques as well as highly specific radioimmunoassay (RIA) for ME, LE and ME-Arg6-Phe7.