Leptin Receptor of Zucker Fatty Rat Performs Reduced Signal Transduction

Tatsuya Yamashita; Takashi Murakami; Mitsuru Iida; Masamichi Kuwajima; Kenji Shima

doi:10.2337/diab.46.6.1077

Rapid Publications

Leptin Receptor of Zucker Fatty Rat Performs Reduced Signal Transduction

Tatsuya Yamashita ,
Takashi Murakami,
Mitsuru Iida ,
Masamichi Kuwajima and
Kenji Shima

From the Department of Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine, the University of Tokushima
Second Tokushima Institute of New Drug Research, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Kawauchi-cho, Tokushima, Japan
Otsuka Assay Laboratories, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Kawauchi-cho, Tokushima, Japan

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Takashi Murakami, Kuramotocho 3-chome, Tokushima 770, Japan. mura{at}clin.med.tokushima-u.ac.jp.

Diabetes 1997 Jun; 46(6): 1077-1080. https://doi.org/10.2337/diab.46.6.1077

Abstract

Zucker fatty (fa/fa) rats exhibit overt obesity, hypercholesterolemia, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia as recessive traits. The fa mutation has been determined to be a missense mutation in the extracellular domain of the leptin receptor. We report herein the construction of CHO cells that stably express the fa-type leptin receptor and the characterization of this receptor using mRNA expression levels of the immediate early genes, c-fos, c-jun, and jun-B, which are induced by leptin as a criterion of signal transduction. The fa-type receptor not only exhibits a slightly reduced leptinbinding affinity, but also performs reduced signal transduction.