Endocrine Abstracts

Emerging studies suggest that GPCR oligomerization could confer functional advantages to receptors and even constitute clinical applications. Recent study found that angiotensin II 1a receptors (AT1aR) and secretin receptors (SCTR) can form heteromer and participate in osmoregulation. Studying GPCR dimerization faces many technical challenges, including selectivity and specificity. Since transmembrane (TM) peptides can act as competitors against the interacting surfaces betwee...

Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide (PACAP) are important neuropeptides that are structurally related. They have been found to exert many physiological and pathophysiological effects through the activation of three specific receptors: PAC1R, VPAC1R, and VPAC2R. In tetrapods, PACAP and VIP are potent agonists to VPAC2R. In teleosts, we have previously identified a PHIR in goldfish which shares high level of sequence similarity ...

In mammals, GHRH is the most important neuroendocrine factor that stimulates the release of GH from the anterior pituitary. In non-mammalian vertebrates, however, the previously named GHRH-like peptides were unable to demonstrate robust GH-releasing activities. In this report, we provide evidence that these GHRH-like peptides are homologues of mammalian PACAP-related peptides (PRP). Instead, GHRH peptides encoded in cDNAs isolated from goldfish, zebrafish and African clawed fr...