Researchers made modified versions of glucagon, a hormone that raises blood sugar, and found some changes made it work much better at breaking down glycogen in rats. The most active version was over five times stronger than normal glucagon, while other tweaks made it weaker. These results show that certain spots on the glucagon molecule can be altered without losing function, and sometimes even improve it.

The functions of the Trp-25 and Met-27 residues and the free carboxy terminus of glucagon have been debated for many years. Despite some semi-synthetic data to the contrary, comparison of the glucagon sequence with the other 5 members of this family of peptides, all of them amides and particularly growth hormone-releasing factor(1-29) amide and its recently described analogues, suggests that alterations to these positions should be quite well tolerated in terms of biological activity. To test this prediction, [Phe-25,Leu-27]-glucagon amide was synthesized in high yield and was found to actually have superior glycogenolytic activity (196%) to glucagon in the rat. Replacement of Gly-4 by D-Phe, which has been shown to give much enhanced glycogenolytic activity than glucagon itself, also increased the activity of [D-Phe-4,Phe-25,Leu-27]-glucagon amide (518%). The L-Phe-4-analogue, [Phe-4,25,Leu-27]-glucagon amide, in contrast, was 20 times less active (30%), strongly suggesting the presence of a beta-bend in this N-terminal region of glucagon. This was supported by Chou-Fasman structural predictions which indicate extensive folding in the 1-15 region. Indeed, additional conformational restriction by substitution of D-Ser in position 2 of glucagon also increased activity to 226%. [D-Gln-3]-glucagon was slightly less active (74%) than glucagon. Chou-Fasman calculations on glucagon were compared to similar treatments of the VIP, secretin, PHI, and GRF(1-29) sequences.