The purification and characterization of six isoforms of ornatin, potent glycoprotein Ilb-IIIa (GP IIb-IlIa) antagonists and platelet aggregation inhibitors are described. These isoforms were purified from whole leech homogenates of the leech Plucohdella ornata, a North American leech commonly known as the turtle leech, by trichloroacetic acid precipitation, Sephadex G-50 size exclusion chromatography, G P IIb-IIIa affinity chromatography, and CIS reverse-phase HPLC. Each of the five completely sequenced isoforms, which range from 41 to 52 residues in length, contains the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) sequence, a common recognition sequence in adhesion proteins, as well as 6 cysteine residues; the positions of both of these features are conserved in the primary sequences. The amino acid sequences of ornatin isoforms B, C, D, and E are highly conserved, whereas ornatin A2 and A3 are less similar and lack 9 residues at the N-terminus. The ornatins are approximately 40% identical with decorsin, a GP IIb-IIIa antagonist isolated from the leech Mncrobddlu decoru