Albumin Cooperstown: a serum albumin variant with the same (313 Lys----Asn) mutation found in albumins in Italy and New Zealand.

Albumin Cooperstown is an electrophoretically fast genetic variant (alloalbumin) inherited in a family in New York State. To determine the structural change, we separated the alloalbumin from normal albumin A by "high-performance" liquid chromatography, reduced and carboxymethylated it, and cleaved it with CNBr. Isoelectric focusing showed that the substitution was in fragment CB4 (residues 299 to 329). The variant CNBr fragment from the albumin of two siblings was purified by liquid chromatography. Automated sequence analysis established the substitution of lysine-313 by asparagine (313 Lys----Asn), which corresponds to mutation of a single nucleotide base. The same substitution has recently been reported in albumin variants in Italy and New Zealand. This provides the first evidence for independent mutations at a single site within the structure of the mature albumin molecule. Because of the significance of albumin for study of protein evolution, clinical chemists are asked to be on the alert for cases of bisalbuminemia.