Characteristics of the brown hagfish Paramyxine atami transthyretin: Metal ion-dependent thyroid hormone binding.

Transthyretin (TTR) is a vertebrate-specific protein involved in thyroid hormone distribution in plasma, and its gene is thought to have emerged by gene duplication from the gene for the ancient TTR-related protein, 5-hydroxyisourate hydrolase, at some early stage of chordate evolution. We investigated the molecular and hormone-binding properties of the brown hagfish Paramyxine atami TTR. The amino acid sequence deduced from the cloned hagfish TTR cDNA shared 33-50% identities with those of other vertebrate TTRs but less than 24% identities with those of vertebrate and deuterostome invertebrate 5-hydroxyisourate hydrolases. Hagfish TTR, as well as lamprey and little skate TTRs, had an N-terminal histidine-rich segment, allowing purification by metal-affinity chromatography. The affinity of hagfish TTR for 3,3',5-triiodo-L-thyronine (T3) was 190 times higher than that for L-thyroxine, with a dissociation constant of 1.5-3.9nM at 4°C. The high-affinity binding sites were strongly sensitive to metal ions. Zn2+ and Cu2+ decreased the dissociation constant to one-order of magnitude, whereas a chelator, o-phenanthroline, increased it four times. The number of metal ions (mainly Zn2+ and Cu2+ ) was approximately 12/TTR (mol/mol). TTR was also a major T3-binding protein in adult hagfish sera and its serum concentration was approximately 8μM. These results suggest that metal ions and the acquisition of N-terminal histidine-rich segment may cooperatively contribute to the evolution toward an ancient TTR with high T3 binding activity from either 5-hydroxyisourate hydrolase after gene duplication.