A new look at vitreous-humour collagen.

The collagens of bovine vitreous-humour and nasal-septum cartilage have been extracted, fractionated and compared. Both tissues show the same heterogeneity of collagen types, consisting of type II, 1 alpha, 2 alpha, 3 alpha and C-PS collagens. The type II collagen of the vitreous humour was significantly more hydroxylated both in the lysine and proline residues than was that of cartilage. C-PS1 collagen, together with higher-Mr forms were present in the vitreous humour, but the higher-Mr forms were not seen in cartilage. Both C-PS1 and C-PS2 were present in vitreous humour and cartilage, but vitreous humour contained three times more of these collagens than did cartilage. Despite the difference in amount, the molar ratio C-PS1/C-PS2 was approx. 1 in both tissues, suggesting that they are components of a larger molecule. The 1 alpha, 2 alpha, 3 alpha collagens were present in the same concentration in both tissues. These three chains co-precipitated on dialysis against phosphate-buffered saline, pH 7.2, in a manner analogous to type V collagen.