Collagen detection

HPLC of non-reduced sound (bottom) and carious dentin (top) hydrolyzates from series 111. Injection 148 pmol collagen. Detection as in figure 1. 

The detection of the collagen-like threefold symmetric polypeptides, polyglycine4 and polyproline5, was the first help to elucidate the collagen structure using a synthetic peptide model. 

Figure 9.3. Percentage of non-detectable amino acids in collagen extracts from archaeological human skeletons. Numbers on top of the columns indicate number of carbon atoms per amino acid. XW = weighted mean of % loss (cf. text). Only high-carbon amino acids are more frequently lost than the average.

Figure 3.15 Chromatogram of fibre-type proteins on polystyrene gels having different pore sizes. Column A, PLRP-S 300 A, 15 cm x 4.6 mm i.d. B, PLRP-S 1000 A (polystyrene gel), 15 cm x 4.6 mm i.d. eluent, 15 min linear gradient from 20% of 0.25% trifluoroacetic acid to 60% of 0.25% trifluoro-acetic acid in 95% aqueous acetonitrile flow rate, 1.0 ml min-1 detection, UV220 nm. Peaks 1, collagen (Mr 120 000) and 2, fibrinogen (Mr 340 000). (Reproduced by permission from Polymer Laboratories data)...

HPLC of fluorescent amino acids from same hydrolyzate of sound (bottom) and carious (middle) dentin as in figure 2, and of a standard mixture (top). Compounds were detected after post-column acidification. Injection 167 pmol collagen of dentin hydrolyzates. 

In addition, peak VI (fig. 1) contained two compounds, one identified as lysinoalanine (table 1). Lysinoalanine is a well-known artefact of alkaline protein treatment but is supposed to be formed in dentin by the reaction between a collagen lysine- and a phosphoprotein phosphoserine residue (Fujimoto et al., 1981). Both compounds were not detected by HPLC after FMOC-derivatization, most likely because of fluorescence quenching inherent to the close vicinity of several FMOC groups attached to one molecule. Thus the unknown compound seems rather similar to lysinoalanine. We suggest the unknown compound is histidinoalanine, which is present in dentin (Fujimoto et al., 1982) and likely shows fluo-rence quenching in its FMOC derivate. 

---