I'm currently investigating the presence of MMPs and their inhibitors in
PMNLs (human) and am using conventional type I collagen degradation assays
and type I collagen zymograms to detect collagenase activities. I'm
battling though to find literature that mentions the exact molecular
weights of the type I alpha, beta and gamma forms (I know that the monomer
is 300 kDa, hence beta is 600 kDa etc) and particulary of the 3/4 and 1/4
fragments released by single sight cleavage of collagen tropohelices by
collagenase (I'd like to know the exact weights and not just estimate the
fragments sizes i.e. 3/4 of 300 kDa and 1/4 of 300 kDa) . Past references
have only reported the very characteristic banding pattern produced by
collagenase when the collagen fragments are run on SDS-PAGE. This is
helpful, but not comletely informative. Can anyone help??
Thanks in advance
priceb at agric.unp.ac.za
brendon price
Department of Biochemistry
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg
South Africa
Tel : +27 331 260 5672
Fax : +27 331 260 5462