Peptide analysis of collagen produced from cDNA by transcription and translation in vitro.

Abstract

When collagen CNBr-cleavage peptides are analysed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis each peptide is resolved into a reproducible set of charged forms. To test whether this peptide heterogeneity resulted from polymorphic mRNA, collagen was produced by transcription and translation in vitro of a collagen cDNA clone, and the peptides were mapped by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. A cDNA construct was produced by ligation of the 5' end of the rat phenylalanine hydroxylase cDNA [Dahl & Mercer (1986) J. Biol. Chem. 261, 4148-4153], containing the translation-initiation codon, to a human alpha 1(I) cDNA [Chu, Myers, Bernard, Ding & Ramirez (1982) Nucleic Acids Res. 10, 5925-5934] coding f..