Crude enzyme obtained from chondroitin sulfate-induced Proteus vulgaris NCTC 4636 has been fractionated into 1) an endoeliminase capable of depolymerizing chondroitin sulfate and related polysaccharides to produce, as end products, a mixture of ⌬ 4 -unsaturated tetra-and disaccharides and 2) an exoeliminase preferentially acting on chondroitin sulfate tetra-and hexasaccharides to yield the respective disaccharides. Isolation of the two enzymes was achieved by a simple two-step procedure: extracting the enzymes from intact P. vulgaris cells with a buffer solution of nonionic surfactant and then treating the extract by cation-exchange chromatography. Each of the enzymes thus prepared was apparently homogeneous as assessed by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and readily crystallized from polyethylene glycol solutions. Both enzymes acted on various substrates such as chondroitin sulfate, chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan, and dermatan sulfate at high, but significantly different, initial rates. They also attacked hyaluronan but at far lower rates and were inactive to keratan sulfate, heparan sulfate, and heparin. Our results show that the known ability of the conventional enzyme called "chondroitinase ABC" to catalyze the complete depolymerization of chondroitin sulfates to unsaturated disaccharides may actually result from the combination reactions by endoeliminase (chondroitin sulfate ABC endolyase) and exoeliminase (chondroitin sulfate ABC exolyase).Chondroitin sulfate ABC lyase (EC 4.2.2.4) was first purified from extracts of Proteus vulgaris NCTC 4636 adapted to chondroitin 6-sulfate (1). It is believed to be an endoeliminase that splits ␤1,4-galactosaminidic bonds between N-acetylgalactosamine and either D-glucuronic acid or L-iduronic acid and degrades, therefore, a variety of glycosaminoglycans of the chondroitin sulfate and dermatan sulfate type to the respective unsaturated disaccharides. Using this enzyme, both chondroitin sulfates and dermatan sulfates were shown to contain, in addition to predominant 4-or 6-sulfated disaccharide residues, a smaller proportion of nonsulfated or disulfated disaccharide residues, or both (2). A variety of studies have since shown that the proportion of these disaccharide residues varies greatly with species and anatomical sites, during development and aging, and in pathology (3-11 among others). Many of these data suggest that variation in the carbohydrate sequence and sulfation pattern may be used to specify the functional properties of chondroitin sulfate and dermatan sulfate proteoglycans.There is a commercially available chondroitin sulfate ABC lyase ("chondroitinase ABC" from P. vulgaris, the product of Seikagaku Corp.) which has found wide applications including the quantification of chondroitin sulfate and dermatan sulfate (12), the structural analysis of the carbohydrate moiety of proteoglycans (13-16), the preparation of core proteins from proteoglycans (13, 17), the formation of antigenic epitopes to prepare anti-proteoglycan monoclonal antibodies (18), and ...

A systematic purification scheme is presented for the isolation of six vitamin K-dependent coagulation factors from bovine plasma in a functionally and biochemically pure state. The vitamin K-dependent proteins concentrated by the ordinary barium citrate adsorption were first separated into four fractions, fractions A, B, C, and D, by DEAE-Sephadex A-50 chromatography. From the pooled fraction A, protein S, factor IX, and prothrombin were purified by column chromatography on Blue-Sepharose CL-6B. Heparin-Sepharose chromatography of the pooled fraction B provided mainly pure factor IX, in addition to homogeneous prothrombin. A high degree of resolution of protein C and prothrombin from the pooled fraction C was obtained with a Blue-Sepharose column. This dye-ligand chromatographic procedure was also very effective for the separation of protein Z and factor X contained in the pooled fraction D. Thus, these preparative procedures allowed high recovery of milligram and gram quantities of six vitamin K-dependent proteins from 15 liters of plasma in only two chromatographic steps, except for protein S, which required three (the third step was rechromatography on Blue-Sepharose CL-6B).