On the presence of sulphate in pituitary lutropin

Abstract

The presence of sulphate in the carbohydrate of pituitary lutropin from different species has been investigated using a biosynthetic approach. Pituitaries from rats, rabbits, goats, and buffaloes were incubated in the presence of ³⁵SO₄^- and the ³⁵SO₄^--labelled proteins in the tissue immunoprecipitated with a well characterized anti-sheep lutropin serum. The incorporation into immunoreactive lutropin was low in the case of rat, rabbit and goat pituitaries while, it was considerable in the case of buffalo pituitaries. Hence further characterization studies were carried out on ³⁵SO₄^--labelled proteins of buffaloes. The physico-chemical, immunological and biological properties of radio-labelled buffalo pituitary material were shown to be similar to those of standard lutropin. Inin vitro conditions of incubations, most of the incorporation of ³⁵SO₄^- was observed into tissue lutropin while under similar conditions of incubation, [¹⁴C]-amino acids were found to get incorporated mostly into medium lutropin. The physiologically specific releasing hormone, lutropin-releasing hormone was found to stimulate the release of ³⁵SO₄^--labelled lutropin from the rabbit pituitaries into the medium. These results give indirect evidence that sulphate could be present in pituitary lutropin.