Cholecystokinin peptides in the brain and pituitary of the bullfrog Rana catesbeiana: distribution and characterization

The distribution of CCK peptides in the bullfrog brain was determined with a CCK radioimmunoassay. Frog brain CCK distribution resembles rat porcine and human brain in that CCK concentration is moderate to high in hypothalamus, diencephalon, and medulla (3 18.4 ng/mg protein) and low in cerebellum (0.6 ng/mg protein). However, unlike all mammalian species examined, the CCK content of frog cerebral cortex, hippocampus and olfactory lobe is quite low (0.03 0.23 ng/mg protein). The elution of CCK-like peptides in frog brain extracts was determined on two HPLC systems. On both systems the bulk of the CCK-like material eluted with CCK 8 sulfate and separated from gastrin and other CCK peptides. These data suggest that though the chemical structure of CCK appears to be the same in the brains of frogs and mammals, the distribution of CCK in the brain appears to have shifted during the course of evolution, becoming a cortical, hippocampal, and olfactory system peptide only in more evolved organisms.