Differential posttranslational processing of proenkephalin in rat bone marrow and spleen mononuclear cells: evidence for synenkephalin cleavage

Proenkephalin (PENK) messenger RNA was reported to be present in bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMC) and spleen mononuclear cells (SMC). Nevertheless, the pattern of PENK products in normal cells of the rat immune system, which is important for defining the physiological role of PENK gene expression, has not been well established. In this work we have characterized the processing of the opioid portion (met-enkephalin-containing peptides) and nonopioid portion (synenkephalin-derived peptides) of PENK in rat BMMC and SMC. Met-enkephalin-containing peptides were detected in mononuclear cells of both hematopoietic tissues. In BMMC, free immunoreactive (IR)-met-enkephalin corresponded only to the 15% of total met-enkephalin-IR, whereas in SMC it represented the 66.5%. Gel filtration chromatography showed that BMMC contained partially processed PENK-derived peptides of high and intermediate molecular weight, whereas SMC displayed fully processed products containing met-enkephalin and/or the carboxyterminal por...