Seroatlas · Human Serome Atlas

GHRL

Appetite-regulating hormone

Also known as: ghrelin, GHRL_HUMAN, MTLRP, obestatin

Cross-references: UniProt · Ensembl · Human Protein Atlas · GeneCards · NCBI Gene

Protein identityUniProt · HPA

UniProt accession
Q9UBU3
Gene
GHRL
Ensembl
ENSG00000157017
Chromosome
3
Canonical length
117 aa
Protein class
Human disease related genes, Plasma proteins, Predicted intracellular proteins, Predicted secreted proteins
Secretome location
Secreted to blood

OverviewNCBI Gene

This gene encodes the ghrelin-obestatin preproprotein that is cleaved to yield two peptides, ghrelin and obestatin. Ghrelin is a powerful appetite stimulant and plays an important role in energy homeostasis. Its secretion is initiated when the stomach is empty, whereupon it binds to the growth hormone secretagogue receptor in the hypothalamus which results in the secretion of growth hormone (somatotropin). Ghrelin is thought to regulate multiple activities, including hunger, reward perception via the mesolimbic pathway, gastric acid secretion, gastrointestinal motility, and pancreatic glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. It was initially proposed that obestatin plays an opposing role to ghrelin by promoting satiety and thus decreasing food intake, but this action is still debated. Recent reports suggest multiple metabolic roles for obestatin, including regulating adipocyte function and glucose metabolism. Alternative splicing results in multiple transcript variants. In addition, antisense transcripts for this gene have been identified and may potentially regulate ghrelin-obestatin preproprotein expression. [provided by RefSeq, Nov 2014]

Canonical amino-acid sequenceUniProt

117 residues, UniProt reviewed canonical sequence.

>Q9UBU3|GHRL
     1  MPSPGTVCSL LLLGMLWLDL AMAGSSFLSP EHQRVQQRKE SKKPPAKLQP RALAGWLRPE
    61  DGGQAEGAED ELEVRFNAPF DVGIKLSGVQ YQQHSQALGK FLQDILWEEA KEAPADK

LocalizationUniProt · AlphaFold · HPA

Whether an antibody against GHRL can act on the native protein depends on physical access: surface and secreted proteins are reachable by circulating antibodies, intracellular proteins usually are not.

Antibody reachability
Secreted
Secreted
Yes
Transmembrane segments
0
Mean surface accessibility (rSASA)
0.58
Highest tissue expression
356 nTPM

Expression across tissuesHPA

Tissue

  • stomach: 356 nTPM
  • duodenum: 18 nTPM
  • lymph node: 6.9 nTPM
  • epididymis: 4.5 nTPM
  • bone marrow: 4.2 nTPM
  • pancreas: 3.9 nTPM

Single-cell type

  • neuroendocrine cells: 12,020 nCPM
  • gastric chief cells: 891 nCPM
  • pancreatic islet cells: 838 nCPM
  • mucous neck cells: 34 nCPM
  • epididymal principal cells: 28 nCPM
  • cdc: 27 nCPM

Immune cell

  • myeloid DC: 42 nTPM
  • plasmacytoid DC: 29 nTPM
  • neutrophil: 26 nTPM
  • basophil: 18 nTPM
  • eosinophil: 12 nTPM
  • classical monocyte: 11 nTPM

Brain region

  • cerebellum: 10 nTPM
  • basal ganglia: 9.9 nTPM
  • cerebral cortex: 9.4 nTPM
  • pons: 8.8 nTPM
  • amygdala: 8.6 nTPM
  • choroid plexus: 7.9 nTPM

ReferencesPubMed · IEDB

Publications for GHRL from three distinct lines of evidence, kept separate because they answer different questions: whether antibodies are directed at the protein, whether a B-cell epitope has been mapped on it, and whether a T-cell epitope has. Each is labelled with its source.

Reference: AutoantibodyPubMed

4 publications

Sources: PubMed — antigen-level antibody evidence from a custom retrieval. Records matching a controlled set of autoantibody terms (the MeSH descriptors Autoantibodies and Autoantigens, with title and abstract term variants) were obtained through NCBI E-utilities, and their titles and abstracts parsed for constructions that direct an antibody at a named protein rather than for co-occurrence. Captured names were resolved against UniProt nomenclature and each antigen adjudicated individually against the source text. Bibliographic records from PubMed and MeSH, U.S. National Library of Medicine; citation metrics from NIH iCite (Hutchins et al., PLoS Biology 2016). Titles link to PubMed; abstracts are not reproduced here. The NLM does not endorse this analysis.

Genetic constraint and essentialitygnomAD · DepMap

Does the body need this protein intact? Low LOEUF or a strong DepMap dependency means loss or blockade of the protein is likely to be felt.

gnomAD LOEUF (loss-of-function intolerance)
1.97
gnomAD pLI
0
gnomAD missense Z
-0.8
DepMap mean gene effect
0.02
DepMap dependency class
none

Cancer expressionTCGA

Across TCGA tumor cohorts, this protein is over-expressed in roughly 3% of surveyed tumor types (aggregate summary; per-cohort expression, alteration, and survival load in the interactive view).

OntologyGO

Biological processes

Molecular functions

Cellular components

Protein domainsUniProt · Pfam · InterPro

KeywordsUniProt

Antibody and autoantibody relevanceSeroatlas analysis

Seroatlas reads GHRL as an antibody target. Whether an autoantibody or antibody against GHRL could matter depends on whether native GHRL is physically reachable, whether the body needs it intact, and whether it acts in a disease-relevant tissue.

GHRL is annotated as secreted, so native GHRL circulates and is directly accessible to antibodies. Secreted and cell-surface proteins are the autoantibody targets most likely to act like drugs, blocking or depleting the native protein.

Annotation status

The present source text does not explicitly label GHRL as an autoantigen. Seroatlas presents hypothesis context only and does not manufacture a known-serology claim.

Canonical record: https://seroatlas.com/gene/GHRL. Study-independent annotations aggregated from UniProt, Human Protein Atlas, PubMed, IEDB, Pfam, InterPro, Gene Ontology, AlphaFold, gnomAD, DepMap, ClinVar, TCGA. Catalog release seroatlas-reviewed-human-uniprot-20260313.

Seroatlas is the reference for exploring autoantibody and antibody serology at the human-protein level: the autoreactome and human serome, multiplex serology (HuProt, HuScan, VirScan, PhIP-Seq).

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