Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D J Kwiatkowski.
A mother and son had peripheral neuropathy, abnormal elevation of serum IgM, and paraproteinemia. These patients may have a familial disorder of immune regulation with antibody-mediated neuropathy or a familial neuropathy with a secondary immune response.
Gelsolin is an actin-fragmenting cytoplasmic protein. A functionally similar protein has also been identified in plasma. We have compared the structure of the cytoplasmic and plasma forms of gelsolin and examined their biosynthetic relationships. Plasma gelsolin is larger than cytoplasmic gelsolin (Mr 93,000 versus 90,000, respectively) and is more positively charged. Partial amino acid sequencing analyses show that the two gelsolins share a common 29 amino acid sequence which lies at the NH2-terminal end of cytoplasmic gelsolin and spans residues 26-55 of plasma gelsolin. Compared with cytoplasmic gelsolin, plasma gelsolin contains an additional peptide of 25 amino acids at its NH2 terminus. The human hepatoma-derived cell line, HepG2, synthesizes both the 90-kDa and the 93-kDa gelsolins but secretes only the 93-kDa form. Pulse-chase experiments demonstrate that the rate of disappearance of the 93-kDa gelsolin from the cells corresponds with the rate of appearance of the 93-kDa gelsolin in the medium, whereas the rate of disappearance of the 90-kDa gelsolin is independent of and slower than that of the secreted plasma protein. We conclude that cytoplasmic and plasma gelsolins are structurally similar but not identical, that after synthesis these proteins are processed independently, and that the fate of each is distinct.
Gelsolin is representative of a class of actin-modulating proteins found in lower eukaryotes to mammals, which sever actin filaments. Gelsolin found in the cytoplasm of cells is functionally similar to a mammalian plasma protein of similar size, originally called ADF or brevin. Human plasma and rabbit macrophage gelsolins differ by the presence of a 25-amino-acid residue extension on plasma gelsolin which appears to account for the difference in relative molecular mass (Mr) between the proteins as assessed by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), 93,000 (93K) and 90K, respectively. Here we report the isolation of full-length human plasma gelsolin complementary DNA clones from a HepG2 library. The inferred amino-acid sequence reveals the presence of a signal peptide, a long tandem repeat that matches the actin-binding domains of gelsolin, a tetrapeptide present in actin and extended regions of identical sequence with rabbit macrophage gelsolin. Southern blot analysis indicates that a single gene in the haploid genome encodes both protein forms.