Tissue and membrane localization

To confirm that the cloned rabbit renal Na exchanger cDNAs encoded an 

Reilly et al. [65] localized the Na /H exchanger gene product in renal epithelial cells where the distributions of the kinetic isoforms was well-established. The strategy was based on the observation that the resistant- and sensitive-types are restricted to the apical and basolateral membranes, respectively, in confluent LLC-PK]/Clone 4 cells [8]. Thus, if proteins encoded by the cloned cDNAs localized to the apical membrane this would indicate that they represent the resistant-type. Localization to the basolateral membrane would prove they were the sensitive-type and presence on both membranes would suggest that the two functional isoforms had identical primary structures. Na exchanger proteins were localized by 

In contrast to these results, Ross et al. [33] found that antisera against a 20-amino acid peptide (Ser-613-Arg-632) of the cytoplasmic domain of the human Na /H exchanger recognized a 66-kDa protein in immunoblots of bovine renal brush border membranes. Since the purity of these membranes was not reported it is possible that this result was due to contamination with basolateral membranes (although the molecular mass would still differ from the basolateral Na /H exchanger in LLC- 

Recently, Tse et al. [73] and Orlowski et al. [74] have cloned a third isoform of Na /H exchanger (named NHE-3). The inferred 832-amino acid sequence of rabbit NHE-3 is 41% identical with NHE-1, 44% identical with NHE-2, and has a similar secondary structure. In contrast to NHE-1 and NHE-2, NHE-3 is only expressed in epithelia in intestine and kidney. Moreover, administration of glucocorticoids, which stimulates transport activity of the apical Na /H exchanger in rabbit intestine, increased levels of NHE-3 transcripts but did not affect NHE-1 or NHE-2 [75]. Taken together, these results suggest that NHE-3 may encode a resistant-type Na /H exchanger of epithelia. A fourth Na /H exchanger isoform (NHE-4) is preferentially expressed in stomach [74]. 

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