Purification and characterization of collagens from rat fibrosarcoma induced by 3-methylcholanthrene

The distribution of various collagen types was studied in rat fibrosarcoma. Collagens extracted from fibrosarcoma tissue were characterized by the criteria of solubility in NaCl, SDS-PAGE, ion exchange chromatography, CNBr peptide mapping and amino acid analysis. Fibrosarcoma was found to produce excess amount of type V, type I trimer and type III collagens; comparatively, type I collagen and total collagen content were noticed to decrease in fibrosarcoma. We observe that the increase in type V collagen content in fibrosarcoma might be due to the enhanced transcription of type V collagen gene. Increased type I trimer collagen in fibrosarcoma might be attributed to the differential expression of alpha 1(I) and alpha 2(I) gene and might also be due to the expression of a different gene for type I trimer collagen.