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1. A new diagonal etectrophoretic technique for determining the order of the lysine-containing tryptic peptides of a protein is described. The protein is converted into its trifluoracetyl derivative, digested enzymatically (or chemically), and the resulting peptides separated by paper electrophoresis. The paper is then treated with ammonia vapour, which re-exposes the ε-amino groups of the lysine residues, and submitted to a second electrophoresis at right angles to the first direction. Peptides containing lysine residues, together with the N-terminal peptide of the protein, are found to lie off a diagonal formed by all other peptides, whence they may be readily purified. A study of these peptides enables the order of the lysine-containing tryptic peptides in the protein to be deduced. 2. The technique has been successfully tested with insulin. 3. When the method was applied to porcine pepsin, the four tryptic peptides isolated were easily ordered and the carboxyl-terminal sequence of the protein shown to be Arg-Gln-Tyr-TyrThr-Val-Phe-Asp-Arg-Ala-Asn-Asn-Lys-Val-Gly-Leu-Ala-Pro-Val-Ala. The thee basic ammo acid residues in the molecule are thus found clustering towards the C-terminus of the polypeptide chain. 4. A common ancestral gene for porcine pepsin and bovine (calf) rennin is suggested by the close homology between the C-terminal sequents of the two proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A purified glycoprotein with blood-group-A specificity, was digested with insoluble pronase to give a serologically active product enriched in peptide-bonded serine and threonine residues; this was degraded with 0.25 M sulphuric in glacial acetic acid for 24 h. The resultant N-acetylgalactosaminyl-peptide were hydrolysed with 0.2 M hydrocholoric acid for 24 h at 110 °C. fractionation of the products on Sephadex G-10, followed by preparative separation on amino-acid analyzer and paper electrophoresis at pH 1.9 yielded the following homogeneous oligopeptides; one tripeptide with the N-terminal sequence Thr-Thr-Ser, three tetrapeptides with the sequences, Thr-Ser-Thr-Ser, Thr-Pro-Thr-Ser and Pro-Thr-Thr-Ser, one pentapeptide with the sequence Thr-Pro-Thr-Ser, one hexapeptide with the sequence Pro-Thr-Thr-Thr-Pro-Ser and one heptapeptide with the sequence Ala-Pro-Thr-Thr-Ser-Gly-Ser. Galactosamine was present in several of these fragments and the hexapeptide and heptapeptide both contained sufficient of this sugar for all the serine and threonine residues to be glycosylated. The following five tetrapeptides sequences were deduced from mixtures of two peptides which differed by the amino-acid substituent at only one position in the chain; Pro-Thr-Ala-ser, Thr-Thr Pro-Ser, thr-Thr-Ala-Ser, Ser-Pro-Thr-Ser, and Ser-Ala-Thr-Ser. A tripeptide mixture which differed only in the nature of the third amino acid yielded the following three tripeptide sequences: Pro-Thr-Ser, Pro-thr-Ala. These peptides do not indicate a clearly defined amino-acid sequence surrounding the glycosylated hydroxy amino acids but establish that in the human blood-group-specific glycoproteins there is close packing of the threonine in the region of the peptide moiety carrying the carbohydrate chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the elucidation of the amino-acid sequence of the carboxyl-terminal region of soybean trypsin inhibitor (Kunitz), fragments C and D were digested with trypsin, and the resulting peptides were separated by ion-exchange chromatography on Dowex 50X2 or by gel filtration on Bio-Gel P-4. Further fractionation and purification of the peptides were performed by ion-exchange chromatography on Dowex 1X2, by gel filtration on Bio-Gel P-2 or by high-voltage paper electrophoresis at pH 1.9 and 3.6. Three peptides were obtained in pure form from fragment C and ten peptides from fragment D, and their amino-acid sequences were determined by the direct Edman method and by carboxy- peptidase digestion technique. Overlapping peptides necessary for the alignment of the tryptic peptides from fragment D were obtained from a chymotryptic hydrolysate of fragment D. Nine main peptides and rune minor peptides were obtained. The amino acid composition and the partial amino-acid sequence of the 18 chymotryptic peptides of fragment D made it possible to establish the amino-acid sequence of the carboxyl-terminal region of the inhibitor. The complete amino-acid sequence of soybean trypsin inhibitor (Kunitz) deduced here was compared with that of Bowman-Birk inhibitor, another well-known soybean proteinase inhibitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to ascertain the physiological role of the peptides which enhanced, the growth of Streptococcus thermophilus in milk, fourteen stimulating peptides were isolated and purified and their qualitative amino-acid composition was determined. The purification process was the following: after hydrolysis at pH 7.5 of whole casein by the neutral protease from Micrococcus caseolyticus the stimulating peptides were fractionated by gel chromatography (Bio-Gel P6), by column chromatography on cation-exchange resins AG 50W X2 (0.05 M pyridine-formate buffer at pit 3.10 to 1.5 M pyridine-acetate buffer at pH 5:10). Further purification was made by column chromatography on anion-exchange resins AG1 X2 (0.1 M pyridine-acetate buffer of pH 7.5 to 6 M acetic acid with a concave gradient system) and by paper chromatography (solvent: butanol-acetic acid-water, 4:1:5, v/v/v) and high tension electrophoresis (30 min; 60 V/cm). Gel filtration of enzymic digest of the whole casein led to six peptide fractions. Three fractions were stimulatory and exhibited a mean molecular weight of (B) 2500, (C) 1500, (D) 1000. Fraction C was the most stimulatory. Three other fractions were inhibitory and contained the highest molecular-weight peptides (about 5000) and peptides with high contents of aromatic residues. Ten and twenty peptide fractions were isolated respectively from Fractions B and D by chromatography on ion-exchange resins; but the peptides obtained after further purification were no more stimulatory. Eleven stimulatory and two inhibitory fractions were separated from Fraction C by column chromatography on cation-exchange resins. Purified stimulatory peptides were obtained from two fractions (C1 and C42) only, after anion-exchange resins (three peptides from Fraction C42, eleven peptides from Fraction C1). These fourteen purified stimulatory peptides display a very variable qualitative amino-acid composition. The polar part (Lys, Glx, Asx) was as important as the hydrophobic part (Pro, Leu, Val, Ala, Gly). The number of distinct amino-acid residues from one peptide was also quite variable: fourteen to four residues. Only lysyl residue was present in all peptides and tryptophan was not present. Three peptides that contained cysteine were issued from %-casein [18]; two peptides (C1a2α and C1C3) could be located respectively to Ala26…Gln22… and Ile26… Arg119 regions from bovine αs1B casein. A complete mixture of amino acids exerted growth stimulation. The set of the amino acids present in a stimulatory peptide was always stimulatory. These data substantiate the following conclusions: (a) stimulatory peptides acted as amino acid source; the amino acids have to be supplied in specific proportions in order not to disturb the cellular amino acids pool and the regulation of amino acid synthesis by Str. thermophilus; (b) the requirements in the peptide-length residues and lysyl residue could be explained by a control system of peptide intake, for example, by a peptide-transport system that would differ from that described in Escherichia coli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globin of sheep heart myoglobin was first cleaved by cyanogen bromide and the resulting fragments were fractionated by gel filtration and preparative paper electrochromatography; each fragment was submitted to endopeptidase digestion and the complete amino acid sequence has been determined. The intact globin and the median cyanogen bromide peptide were analysed by the protein sequanator (Edman). This analysis confirmed the sequence of the first 46 N- terminal residues of the intact globin and established the sequence of the first 39 N-terminal residues of the median cyanogen bromide peptide. Between sheep and beef myoglobin six differences over 153 residues can be noticed; among the six amino acid replacements, two correspond to the exchange of two bases and four to the exchange of one base in the coding triplets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Tryptic hydrolysates of denaturated glutamic-aspartic transaminase fractionated on a Sephadex G-25 column, gave an elution diagram containing six main fractions. When peptide maps were developed from the transaminase digest 37 spots were detected on the paper sheet. 2. It was demonstrated that the transaminase fractions (groups of peptides) as well as some of the individual peptides eluted from the map spots, possessed immunological activity. This was proved by theft capacity to interact with rabbit pig heart antienzyme and rabbit antiserum against the pig-heart whole tryptic transaminase hydrolysate as well as to inhibit the homologous transaminase-antitransaminase reaction. Higher immunological reactivity was found among peptides moving faster in electrophoresis and chromatography. 3. The catalytic activity of rabbit transaminases (heart, liver, skeletal muscles), was inhibited to a substantial degree by the rabbit anti-pig heart transaminase. The above enzymes however. as was otherwise expected, gave negative precipitin reactions with antitransaminase. A comparative study of the reactivity between transaminases from pig, ox and rabbit and rabbit antitransaminases against pig and ox heart enzymes as well as against pig-heart whole tryptic transaminase hydrolysate is presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]