Short-chain basement membrane collagen.

The paper describes further characterization of the 55-kDa short-chain collagen from lens capsule. Lens capsules were extracted with 5.5 M guanidine · HCl and the extracted material was fractionated on agarose A5M followed by high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). By amino acid composition, the major fraction obtained from HPLC was found to be different than type-IV collagen fragments. The 55-kDa short-chain collagen on pepsin digestion produced a 45-kDa pepsin-resistant fragment. The undifferentiated embryonal carcinoma (F-9) cells were found to synthesize increased amounts of 55-kDa short-chain collagen. The identity of this biosynthesized molecule with 55-kDa short-chain collagen from lens capsules was established by immunoprecipitation experiments. The results indicated a close similarity or identical nature of the short-chain collagens from these two sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]