Isolation and characterization of desmosine(s) containing peptide fractions of normal and diseases human aortic...

Normal and diseased human aortic elastins were isolated and highly purified. They were subsequently submitted to elastase and thermolysin digestion followed by partial acid hydrolysis to increase crosslinkage. The peptide fractions containing these highly cross-linked desmosines were extensively purified either by ion exchange chromatography or by gel-filtration. Their amino acid composition was determined. Detailed investigation of the purified peptide fraction from normal human elastin containing desmosines was carried out using different N-terminal and C-terminal procedures, thus permitting the probable covalent structure of the desmosine containing peptide(s) to be proposed. Irrespective of their origin (healthy or pathologic), the elastin samples all revealed the same amino acid composition with a very high alanine content in the cross-linking peptides. This work is submitted as proof that changes in amino acid composition are essentially due to "dilution" and contamination by structural glycoproteins and not to structural changes in amino acid compoistion in the vicinal cross-links positions. We find that not only "clustering" alanine residues but also glycine, proline, valine, leucine and tyrosine residues are located in the immediate vicinity of both desmosine and isodesmosine residues.