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Updated: May 18, 2026
Dissection of Human Vitreous Body Elements for Proteomic Analysis
Published on: January 23, 2011
Functional analysis of misfolded transthyretin extracted from abnormal vitreous with high myopia related ocular
1Department of Ophthalmology, The Wuxi People's Hospital, 299 Qing yang Road, Wuxi 214023, People's Republic of China. shaojun1983@gmail.com
Background:
In the development of high myopia, some secondary ocular diseases such as macular detachment (MD) and macular hole (MH) may occur owing to the elongation of the eyeball. Higher concentrations of misfolded transthyretin (TTR) had been detected in abnormal vitreous humor, but the mechanisms are still unclear.
Method:
TTRs of high myopia and healthy vitreous were purified with TTR polyclonal antibody-Sepharose. Gel exclusion chromatography, cleavage activity assay and a fluorescent probe were employed for the functional comparison of natural and abnormal TTRs.
Results:
Compared with natural transthyretin, MH TTR showed lower retinol-binding protein (RBP) binding ability; and MD TTR could not bind with RBP at all. Additionally, MH and MD TTR did not reveal cleavage activity against apolipoprotein AI (apoA-I). Furthermore, the kinetic parameters of the interactions between abnormal TTRs and a thyroxine-like fluorescent probe were quite different from those of natural TTR.
Conclusions:
The results suggested that misfolded TTRs in MD and MH patients' vitreous completely or partially lost natural bio-functions; and this should be associated with abnormal high TTR levels.
