The effects of oxidation on the reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography characteristics of the high mobility groups 1 and 2 proteins.

Ion-pair reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography is a quick and convenient method for obtaining essentially pure preparations of the HMG (high mobility group)-1 and HMG-2 proteins if dithiothreitol is added to the eluted HMG protein fractions to prevent oxidation and their subsequent altered migration on acid-urea polyacrylamide gels. Unexpectedly, we found that this chromatographic separation technique can resolve the oxidized and reduced forms of both HMG-1 and HMG-2 proteins. We show that oxidized HMG-1 and -2 protein subfractions are responsible for some, but by no means all, of the HMG-1 and -2 protein heterogeneity previously reported by Elton and Reeves (2). At least two different HMG-1 protein species (one major and one minor) and at least four different HMG-2 protein species (two major and two minor) are consistently found in fully reduced "enriched" HMG-1 and -2 pig thymus protein preparations.