Endocrine Abstracts

Leptin is a pleiotropic hormone acting both centrally and peripherally. It participates in variety of biological processes including energy metabolism, reproduction and modulation of the immune response. So far structural elements affecting leptin binding to its receptor remain unknown. We employed random mutagenesis of leptin, followed by selection of high-affinity mutants by yeast-surface display and discovered that replacing residue D23 with a non-negatively charged amino a...