Embryonic chick cartilage collagens. Differences in the low-Mr species present in sternal cartilage and tibiotarsal articular cartilage.

The collagenous polypeptides present in embryonic chick sternal and tibiotarsal cartilages have been solubilised by digestion with pepsin and separated by salt fractionation. Type II collagen, 1 alpha 2 alpha 3 alpha collagen, and two polypeptides (apparent molecular mass 150 and 42 kDa), which were reducible to a number of smaller peptides, were extracted from both tissues. However, also present in the peptic digests of tibiotarsal cartilages was a major non-reducible highly-soluble polypeptide of 45 kDa. This short-chain collagen is apparently identical to the pepsinized product of G collagen (Mr 59 000), a major low-Mr procollagen-like species previously detected in chick chondrocyte cultures.