{PDOC00442} {PS00511; CRF} {BEGIN} *************************************************** * Corticotropin-releasing factor family signature * *************************************************** Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) (corticoliberin) [1] is a hormone from the hypothalamus that regulates the release of corticotropin (ACTH) from the pituitary gland. CRF is evolutionary related to a number of other active peptides which are listed below. - Urocortin (Ucn) [2], a brain mammalian peptide with corticotropin-releasing factor activity. - Urotensin 1 from the urophysis of fish. Like CRF and Ucn, it acts in ACTH secretion. - Sauvagine from frog skin, a peptide with a potent hypotensive action that elicits a diuretic effect. - Diuretic hormone (DH) (or diuretic peptide (DP) from a variety of insects. DH is involved in the regulation of fluid secretion [3]. All these hormones are peptides of about 40 amino acid residues which are C- terminally amidated and processed from a larger precursor protein. We derived a signature pattern of conserved residues, running from position 4 to 19 in these peptides. -Consensus pattern: [PQA]-x-[LIVM]-S-[LIVM]-x(2)-[PST]-[LIVMF]-x-[LIVM]-L-R- x(2)-[LIVMW] -Sequences known to belong to this class detected by the pattern: ALL, except for diuretic hormone 2 from tobacco hornworm. -Other sequence(s) detected in Swiss-Prot: 1. -Last update: July 1999 / Pattern and text revised. [ 1] Lederis K.P., Okawara Y., Richter D., Morley S.D. "Evolutionary aspects of corticotropin releasing hormones." Prog. Clin. Biol. Res. 342:467-472(1990). PubMed=2200028 [ 2] Vaughan J., Donaldson C., Bittencourt J., Perrin M.H., Lewis K., Sutton S., Chan R., Turnbull A.V., Lovejoy D., Rivier C. "Urocortin, a mammalian neuropeptide related to fish urotensin I and to corticotropin-releasing factor." Nature 378:287-292(1995). PubMed=7477349; DOI=10.1038/378287a0 [ 3] Clottens F.L., Holman G.M., Coast G.M., Totty N.F., Hayes T.K., Kay I., Mallet A.I., Wright M.S., Chung J.S., Truong O. "Isolation and characterization of a diuretic peptide common to the house fly and stable fly." Peptides 15:971-979(1994). PubMed=7991460 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROSITE is copyrighted by the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, see https://prosite.expasy.org/prosite_license.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- {END}