The linkage region in the polypeptide of pig costal cartilage proteoglycan.

Proteoglycan from pig costal cartilage and fragments obtained by proteolytic digestion were characterized by equilibrium ultracentrifugation and amino acid analysis. The proteoglycan extractable in 4 M guanidinium chloride yielded, after proteolytic digestion with trypsin and chymotrypsin, a chondroitin sulfate peptide containing four chains of polysaccharide. The unextractable residue yielded chondroitin sulfate peptide containing only two chains. The amino acid composition indicated a fairly uniform spacing between all four chains with an average of eight amino acid residues between the serine residues involved in linkage. Following the alkaline sulfite elimination-addition reaction, free peptide was isolated and found to contain one unsubstituted serine residue for every two linked glycosidically. Glycine and glutamic acid were the only two amino acids sufficiently abundant to be part of an invariant sequence near to serine residues destined to be glycosylated. The linkage region of the polypeptide also contains some substituted serine residues which do not carry a full chondroitin sulfate chain.