Understanding peptide biology: The discovery and characterization of the novel hormone, neuronostatin

Abstract

The Human Genome Project provided the opportunity to use bioinformatic approaches to discover novel, endogenous hormones. Using this approach we have identified two novel peptide hormones and review here our strategy for the identification and characterization of the hormone, neuronostatin. We describe in this mini-review our strategy for determining neuronostatin's actions in brain, heart and pancreas. More importantly, we detail our deductive reasoning strategy for the identification of a neuronostatin receptor and our progress in establishing the physiological relevance of the peptide.

Keywords: Hypothalamus; Neuropeptides; Pituitary; Receptors.

Figure 1. Colocalization of neuronostatin and GPR107 in human pancreas tissue

Human pancreas section obtained during routine autopsy at Saint Louis University Hospital were exposed to exogenous neuronostatin (30 nM), then fixed and stained using antibodies directed against GPR107 (green), neuronostatin (red), and glucagon (blue). A single islet is shown in which multiple instances of triple co-localization (white) are observed in the merged imaged (lower left panel), indicating that neuronostatin and GPR107 co-localize on alpha cell membranes.