Formation of complexes between 125I-labelled human or bovine somatotropins and binding proteins in vivo in rat liver and kidney.

At 5 min after intravenous injection, both 125I-labelled human somatotropin and 125I-labelled bovine somatotropin were concentrated in rat liver and kidney. When the labelled hormones were administered along with an excess of the corresponding unlabelled hormone, a significant decrease of the uptake was observed in the liver, but not in the kidney. Study of the subcellular distribution of radioiodinated somatotropins in liver revealed that most of the radioactivity was specifically concentrated in the microsomal fraction. In contrast, the kidney fraction that accounted for most of the radioactivity was the 100 000 g supernatant. After solubilization, with 1% (w/v) Triton X-100, of the microsomal fractions obtained from both organs, the radioactive material was analysed by gel filtration on Sepharose CL-6B. By using this approach, it was demonstrated that both 125I-labelled human somatotropin and 125I-labelled bovine somatotropin bind in vivo to proteins present in liver. A small proportion of 125I-labelled human somatotropin was also shown to form complexes with proteins present in kidney. The present results demonstrate that the liver uptake is mainly due to binding of somatotropins to specific proteins, in contrast with the kidney, in which binding to specific sites contributes minimally to the overall uptake.