Identification of a novel gene encoding an insulin-responsive glucose transporter protein.

Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.

Insulin, rapidly and independently of new protein synthesis, stimulates glucose transport in sensitive target tissues. A cDNA has been cloned from a skeletal muscle library that encodes a novel glucose transporter protein exhibiting the following properties of an insulin-regulated hexose carrier protein: it is expressed exclusively in adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and heart, the principal organs with insulin-responsive glucose transport; RNA transcribed from the muscle cDNA, when expressed in Xenopus oocytes, encodes a protein capable of cytochalasin B inhibitable 2-deoxyglucose transport; and treatment of isolated rat adipocytes with insulin effects a redistribution of "muscle" transports from low density microsomes to the plasma membrane to an extent comparable to the activation of glucose transport.

PMID: 2649253 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]