Molecular Cloning and mRNA Expression of the Porcine Insulin-responsive Glucose Transporter (GLUT4)

Insulin-responsive glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) is a member of the glucose transporter family and mainly presents in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue. To clarify the molecular structure of porcine GLUT4, RACE was used to clone its cDNA. Several cDNA clones corresponding to different regions of GLUT4 were obtained by amplifying reverse-transcriptase products of total RNA extracted from Landrace porcine skeletal muscles. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the cDNA clones revealed that porcine GLUT4 cDNA was composed of 2,491 base pairs with a coding region of 509 amino acids. The deduced amino acid sequence was over 90% identical to human, rabbit and cattle GLUT4. The tissue distribution of GLUT4 was also examined by Real-time RT-PCR. The mRNA expression abundance of GLUT4 was heart>liver, skeletal muscle and brain>lung, kidney and intestine. The developmental expression of GLUT4 and insulin receptor (IR) was also examined by Real-time RT-PCR using total RNA extracted from longissimus dorsi (LM), semimembranosus (SM), and semitendinosus (SD) muscle of Landrace at the age of 1, 7, 30, 60 and 90 d. It was shown that there was significant difference in the mRNA expression level of GLUT4 in skeletal muscles of Landrace at different ages (p 0.05). These results showed that the nucleotide sequence of the cDNA clones was highly identical with human, rabbit and cattle GLUT4 and the developmental change of GLUT4 mRNA in skeletal muscles was similar to that of IR, suggesting that porcine GLUT4 might be an insulin-responsive glucose transporter. Moreover, the tissue distribution of GLUT4 mRNA showed that GLUT4 might be an important nutritional transporter in porcine skeletal muscles.