Conformational changes in fibrous elastin due to calcium ions.

A column packed with calcium-free bovine aorta elastin provided good separations of mixtures of bile salts when water was the moving phase. Tritium-labelled cholesterol was applied to the column using dilute solutions of taurodeoxycholate in Tris-NaCl buffers as solvent. The cholesterol was quantitatively eluted as a narrow peak in a rising gradient of taurodeoxycholate. When Na+ in the buffer was replaced by Ca2+ elution of the labelled cholesterol was delayed. Control experiments in which the elastin fibres were replaced as the column packing by an inert stationary phase consisting of n-butanol immobilized by silane-treated Celite showed that the effect of the change from Na+ to Ca2+ on the solvent properties of taurodeoxycholate was small and in the opposite direction. The experiments indicated that the replacement of sodium by calcium as the ionic environment of fibrous elastin produced a configurational change towards increasing hydrophobic character.