Sortilin is a major protein component of Glut4-containing vesicles.

In fat and skeletal muscle cells, glucose transporter isoform 4 (Glut4) is translocated to the cell surface in response to insulin via a system of specialized recycling vesicles. Besides Glut4, these vesicles include the novel insulin-regulatable aminopeptidase, receptors for insulin-like growth factor-II/Man-6-phosphate and transferrin, and a glycoprotein with the molecular mass of 110 kDa. We report here by the criteria of the partial protein sequencing and subsequent cDNA cloning that glycoprotein 110, the last unidentified major protein component of Glut4-containing vesicles, is sortilin, a novel type I receptor-like protein recently cloned from human brain (Petersen, C. M., Nielsen, M. S., Nykjar, A., Jacobsen, L., Tommerup, N., Rasmussen, H. H., Roigaard, H., Gliemann, J., Madsen, P., and Moestrup, S. K. (1997) J. Biol. Chem. 272, 3599-3605). This protein is highly expressed in fat, brain, and lung and is dramatically up-regulated during differentiation of adipocytes in vitro.