Surface exposure of glycosaminoglycans in resting, growing and virus transformed 3T3 cells

Glycosaminoglycans (GAG's) were released by trypsin from the surface of cultured mouse cells (3T3) in two different growing states: during log-growth phase and during resting due to serum starvation. Doubly labelled molecules from resting cells were compared with those from growing as well as from trnsformed cells. Reproducible differences in the elution pattern during ion exchange chromatography and in susceptibility to specific hydrolytic enzymes have been demonstrated: the GAGs pattern of growing normal cells is similar to the pattern of the cells transformed by either Polyoma or SV-40 viruses and very different from the pattern of resting cells. Growing and transformed 3T3 show a relatively low amount of trypsin removable heparan sulphate (HS) and a relatively high amount of hyaluronic acid (HA) while resting cells exhibit an opposite ratio between the two GAG'S. The lowering of HS and the increase of HA in the cell coat is therefore suspected to be more dependent upon growth than upon transformation.