Molecular cloning of complementary DNA to swine pepsinogen mRNA

Poly(A)-containing RNA was isolated from total RNA of swine gastric mucosa by oligo(dT)-cellulose chromatography, and was translated in a wheat germ cell-free system. Analysis of the translation products by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed that pepsinogen was a major translation product and was synthesized as two different molecular forms with apparent molecular weights of 45,000 and 43,000. The pepsinogen translated in the in vitro translation system had no autocatalytic activity. The pepsinogen mRNA was further purified by sucrose density gradient centrifugation, where the mRNA activity for pepsinogen was located around 15 S. At this stage, the translation product of the pooled fractions appeared to be almost exclusively pepsinogen. The peptide maps of the pepsinogen which was translated in vitro and digested by alpha-chymotrypsin and by Staphylococcus aureus V8 protease were nearly identical with the corresponding peptide maps of standard pepsinogen. The double-stranded complementary DNA which had been synthesized from the partially purified mRNA by avian myeloblastosis virus reverse transcriptase was cloned in Escherichia coli chi 1776, using plasmid pBR322 as a cloning vector. A colony carrying pepsinogen cDNA sequence was identified by in situ colony hybridization using the cDNA synthesized from the partially purified mRNA as a probe and further by a positive hybridization-translation assay. One of the recombinant clones (pSPcA1) had an insert of about 850 base pairs, and the nucleotide sequence analysis revealed that pSPcA1 codes for swine pepsinogen.