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Honeybee prepromelittin is correctly processed and imported by dog pancreas microsomes. Membrane insertion of prepromelittin, assayed as signal sequence removal by signal peptidase, is not dependent on signal recognition particle and docking protein. However, a previously uncharacterized proteinaceous component of the microsomal membrane is required for completion of membrane transfer of promelittin. Furthermore, membrane insertion of prepromelittin is not coupled to translation. These data suggest the signal sequence, in addition to its role in membrane recognition, has a more general function for membrane insertion, cotranslational import of proteins is not an intrinsic feature of microsomes, and at least in certain cases, proteinaceous membrane components are involved in membrane transfer.

The biosynthesis of the peptides caerulein and PGLa in granular skin glands of Xenopus laevis proceeds through a pathway that involves discrete morphological rearrangements of the entire secretory compartment. Immunocytochemical localization of these peptides during gland development indicates that biosynthetic precursors are synthesized in intact secretory cells, whereas posttranslational processing requires morphological reorganization to a vacuolated stage. The bulk of the processed secretory material is then stored in vacuolae-derived storage granules. In the mature gland, storage granules are still formed at a low level. However, in this case processing takes place in a distinct cytoplasmic structure, the multicored body, which we suggest to be functionally equivalent to vacuolae. When granular glands regenerate after having lost all their storage granules upon strong stimuli, another morphological pathway is used. 2 wk after gland depletion, secretory cells become arranged in a monolayer that covers the luminal surface of the gland. Storage granules are formed continuously within these intact secretory cells. Here, precursor processing does not require a vacuolated stage as in newly generated glands but occurs in multicored bodies. Most storage granules seem to be formed in the third week of regeneration. The high biosynthetic activity is also reflected by the high activity of the putative processing enzyme dipeptidyl aminopeptidase during this period of regeneration.

It has previously been shown that rat liver microsomes contain a proteolytic enzyme that cleaves honeybee prepromelittin to yield promelittin. This enzyme has now been further purified by centrifugation on a sucrose-deoxycholate gradient and then reconstituted into phospholipid vesicles. Incubation of prepromelittin with vesicles in the presence of melittin yields, in addition to promelittin, a hydrophobic peptide. The latter could be isolated by extraction with l-butanol and paper electrophoresis in 30% formic acid and was shown to be intact signal peptide by analysis of peptic fragments and automated Edman degradation. The microsomal enzyme is thus an endoprotease that hydrolyzes prepromelittin exclusively at the pre-pro junction. The precision of this cleavage of an insect preprotein by a rat liver enzyme indicates that we are dealing with the ubiquitous eukaryotic signal peptidase.

The interaction between the peptide melittin from bee venom with multilamellar liposomes of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine or egg yolk phosphatidylcholine has been studied by the method of temperature scanning densitometry, yielding information on the specific volume of the association products and on the changes during the thermotropic transition of the lipids. The effects of the interaction were found to be biphasic with respect to melittin concentration; below 10(-3) mol per mol of phospholipid, an increase in transition temperature, abolition of the pretransition, a reduction in the transition volume of the lipids by about 25%, and a nonadditive increase in apparent specific volume of the complexes were observed. Only minor changes in these parameters could be detected between molar ratios of 10(-3) and 10(-2). Above 1 mol % melittin, the transition temperature decreased and the transition volume approached zero around 10 mol %. Since the effects in the low concentration range cannot be accounted for only by local perturbations around the actual sites of interaction, it is concluded that the interaction involves long range effects of melittin affecting several hundreds of phospholipid molecules. The results are discussed in terms of a phospholipid cluster model, whereby the interaction with melittin leads to a cooperative transition of entire clusters to a state of expanded volume. It is suggested that this transition may be important to the activating effect of melittin on membrane enzymes and to enhanced membrane permeability and lysis.

Honeybee prepromelittin (70 amino acid residues), the precursor of an eukaryotic secretory protein, and a hybrid protein between prepromelittin and mouse dihydrofolate reductase (257 amino acid residues) were expressed in Escherichia coliand characterized with respect to their requirements for transport across the plasma membrane. Both precursor proteins are posttranslationally processed and exported into the periplasm, and they both depend on the membrane potential for this to occur. With respect to dependence on components of the export machinery, however, the two precursor proteins show striking differences: the small precursor protein prepromelittin does not require the function of proteins secA and secY; the large precursor protein prepromelittin-dihydrofolate reductase, on the other hand, depends on both components. The implications of these observations with respect to the mechanisms of protein export in E. coliand of protein import into the endoplasmic reticulum are discussed.