Extracts from BSC-40 cells infected with vaccinia recombinants expressing either the yeast KEX2 prohormone endoprotease or a human structural homologue (fur gene product) contained an elevated level of a membrane-associated endoproteolytic activity that could cleave at pairs of basic amino acids (-LysArg- and -ArgArg-). The fur-directed activity (furin) shared many properties with Kex2p includi...

Alphaviruses replicate in vertebrate and arthropod cells and utilize a cellular enzyme called furin to process the PE2 glycoprotein precursor during virus replication in both cell types. Furin cleaves PE2 at a site immediately following a highly conserved four residue cleavage signal. Prior studies demonstrated that the amino acid immediately adjacent to the cleavage site influenced PE2 cleavag...

Furin, a KEX2 protease homolog with high RNA expression in the liver is an excellent candidate as a hepatic proprotein convertase. Here we show that purified recombinant furin has the same proalbumin specificity and serpin inhibitory properties as the in situ hepatic convertase. There was rapid cleavage at the -RRD- site of normal human proalbumin but there no significant cleavage of natural un...

The ubiquitous serine endoprotease furin has been implicated in the activation of bacterial toxins and viral glycoproteins as well as in the metastatic progression of certain tumors. Although high molecular mass bioengineered serpin inhibitors have been well characterized, no small nontoxic nanomolar inhibitors have been reported to date. Here we describe the identification of such inhibitors u...

The proprotein convertases (PCs) participate in the limited proteolysis of integrin alpha4 subunit at the H(592)VISKR(597) downward arrow ST site (where underlined residues indicate positively charged amino acids important for PC-mediated cleavage and downward arrow indicates the cleavage site), since this cleavage is inhibited by the serpin alpha1-PDX (alpha1-antitrypsin Portland). Co-expressi...

Polyphenols, a class of natural products, have been shown to exhibit cancer protective properties. Proprotein convertases form a family of mammalian subtilisin-like serine endoproteases. Increased expression of these enzymes has been associated with numerous pathologies including cancer. It has been suggested that the cancer protective effect of polyphenols might be related to their proprotein ...

The regulated sorting of proteins within the trans-Golgi network (TGN)/endosomal system is a key determinant of their biological activity in vivo. For example, the endoprotease furin activates of a wide range of proproteins in multiple compartments within the TGN/endosomal system. Phosphorylation of its cytosolic domain by casein kinase II (CKII) promotes the localization of furin to the TGN an...

Furin is involved in the endoproteolytic processing of various protein precursors implicated many diseases such as diabetes, obesity, atherosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and viral infection including COVID-19. Recently, cell entry SARS-CoV-2 was found to require sequential cleavage spike glycoprotein (S protein) at S1/S2 S2? sites. The site (PRRAR) can be cleaved by proprotein converta...

Proprotein convertases are enzymes that proteolytically cleave protein precursors in the secretory pathway to yield functional proteins. Seven mammalian subtilisin/Kex2p-like proprotein convertases have been identified: furin, PC1, PC2, PC4, PACE4, PC5 and PC7. The binding pockets of all seven proprotein convertases are evolutionarily conserved and highly similar. Among the seven proprotein con...

The convertase furin is involved in the maturation of key growth/aggregation mediators synthesized by the platelet producers, megakaryocytes, but the regulation of furin in these cells remains unknown. Computer-assisted search of the furin promoter sequence revealed multiple potential binding motifs for GATA-1, suggesting that furin is expressed and regulated in these cells. Using megakaryoblas...