Mass spectrometric charting of bovine posterior/intermediate pituitary peptides.

The feasibility for charting neuropeptides in neuroendocrine tissues on the basis of the universal property and inherent specificity of their molecular weights was explored. As a model, a comprehensive MS analysis of extractable peptides from bovine posterior/intermediate pituitary was performed. Two suitable MS techniques--namely, plasma-desorption time-of-flight and fast atom bombardment MS--were evaluated, and each method could identify more than 20 peptides, including N-terminally acetylated and C-terminally amidated species. In toto these peptides account for almost the entire lengths of propressophysin, prooxyphysin, and proopiomelanocortin. Some of the experimentally determined molecular weights did not match any known peptides. Three of these species were identified as acidic joining peptide (4-24) [proopiomelanocortin(83-103)], C-terminal glycopeptide(22-39) [propressophysin(130-147)], and glycosylated C-terminal glycopeptide(1-19) [propressophysin(109-127)] by conventional sequence analysis.