Endothelin-1 mRNA expression in the rat kidney.

Cultured pig and bovine endothelial cells are capable of synthesizing endothelin-1 (ET-1). Thus the observation that the kidney contains a large number of binding sites for ET distributed in close proximity to endothelial cells suggests that ET-1 may be released from the endothelium to act locally on these receptors. In support of this hypothesis, using the technique of reverse transcription with specific amplification of cDNA, we report here that ET-1 mRNA is expressed in the rat kidney. The partial sequence of the amplified rat ET-1 cDNA confirms that the mature rat peptide is identical to that of the mouse, man and pig, but with some differences in codon usage.