Identification of stress proteins in endothelial cells.

Endothelial cells have been shown to play a major role in the pathophysiology of various diseases including ischemic heart disease and viral infection leading to myocarditis or dilated cardiomyopathy, conditions in which stress proteins (heat shock protein-hsp; glucose-related protein - grp) are likely to be involved. For further characterization of stress proteins and their possible role in these diseases, the major stress proteins in human endothelial cells were separated by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with immobilized pH gradients in the first dimension and identified by immunoblotting and either N-terminal or internal amino acid sequencing, respectively. Ubiquitin, hsp27, hsp60, hsp70, heat shock cognate protein 70, grp78 and grp75 were found to be constitutively expressed; hsp72 was found in stressed cells, exclusively, in line with results obtained in other human cell lines. Three additional proteins with molecular masses between 34 and 40 were regularly detected in stressed cells that were found to have identical amino acid sequences with those of members of the hsp70 family.