Cystine-rich proteins of human hair: characterization and structure as revealed by reversed-phase and size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography.

The human hair cystine-rich proteins have been separated through the combined use of reversed-phase and size-exclusion chromatography into more than fifty components. These have been grouped, based on molecular weight, into six families of closely related members. The families range in molecular weight from less than 6500 for the low-molecular-weight components to more than 67 000 for the high-molecular-weight components, with average intermediate values for the other families of 8000, 11 500, 15 500 and 19 000. The results also suggest an organized structure of the hair matrix proteins. The combined use of reversed-phase and size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography in these studies presents an example where the quaternary structure of a multi-component protein can be largely deduced from its chromatographic behaviour.