Purification of prosomatostatin-converting enzymes.

The enzymes responsible for performing cleavage of propeptides at basic amino acids have proven difficult to characterize. Using the processing of anglerfish islet prosomatostatin (PSS) as a model system, we are pursuing the characterization of both a single basic amino acid-specific and a dibasic amino acid-specific converting enzyme. We describe here the model system and protein isolation methods that have allowed significant progress toward complete characterization of the somatostatin-generating propeptide converting enzymes (PCEs).