"Matrigenin" activity from bovine bone--I. Partial purification of activity

1. Bovine bone contains an extractable activity which stimulated the synthesis of glycosaminoglycans by bovine synovial, human synovial and mouse 3T3 fibroblastic cells in culture. Human cells were used to develop an assay for purification of the stimulatory activity ("matrigenin" activity) from bovine bone. 2. Partial purification of "matrigenin" activity was achieved by precipitation of the EDTA extract at pH 3.5 and Sepharose CL-6B chromatography in 4 M guanidinium HCl. Dissociative conditions were necessary to prevent aggregation. 3. On SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis the activity ran with a mobility equivalent to a Mr = 27,500 and could be recovered from the SDS gels.