UCSF

Islet amyloid formation contributes to β-cell death and dysfunction in type-2 diabetes and to the failure of islet transplants. Amylin (islet amyloid polypeptide, IAPP), a normally soluble 37 residue polypeptide hormone produced in the pancreatic β-cells, is responsible for amyloid formation in type-2 diabetes and is deficient in type-1 diabetes. Amylin normally plays an adaptive role in metabolism, and the development of nontoxic, non-amyloidogenic, bioactive variants of human amylin are of interest for use as adjuncts to insulin therapy. Naturally occurring non-amyloidogenic variants are of interest for xenobiotic transplantation and because they can provide clues toward understanding the amyloidogenicity of human amylin. The sequence of amylin is well-conserved among species, but sequence differences strongly correlate with in vitro amyloidogenicity and with islet amyloid formation in vivo. Bovine amylin differs from the human peptide at 10 positions and is one of the most divergent among known amylin sequences. We show that bovine amylin oligomerizes but is not toxic to cultured β-cells and that it is considerably less amyloidogenic than the human polypeptide and is only a low-potency agonist at human amylin-responsive receptors. The bovine sequence contains several nonconservative substitutions relative to human amylin, including His to Pro, Ser to Pro, and Asn to Lys replacements. The effect of these substitutions is analyzed in the context of wild-type human amylin; the results provide insight into their role in receptor activation, the mode of assembly of human amylin, and the design of soluble amylin analogues.