Abstract
Cellular interactions in neural development are influenced by various extracellular proteins, many of which bind glycosaminoglycans or proteoglycans. Precise functions of nervous system proteoglycans remain unknown, in part because neural proteoglycan composition is poorly understood. In this study, 25 putative proteoglycan core proteins were identified in subcellular fractions of rat brain. Levels of many of these varied considerably during development. Membrane-associated proteoglycans included two heparan sulfate proteoglycans (cores of 50 and 59 kd) that are covalently linked to glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol lipid, as well as several that appear to aggregate either with themselves or with copurifying proteins. These data indicate that brain proteoglycans exhibit the abundance, structural diversity, and developmental regulation that would be anticipated for molecules with diverse developmental functions.
Highlights
The behaviors of developing neural cells-e.g., directed cell migration, axon outgrowth and navigation, synaptogenesis, and selective cell death-require the precise orchestration of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions
The likelihood that PCs are involved in a wide variety of important events in neural development has been suggested by studies of neurulation (Morris-Kay and Crutch, 1982), neural cell-substratum adhesion
The results indicate that a wide variety of heparan sulfate and chondroitin sulfate PGs can be identified in the mammalian brain, that individual PGs associate with particular subcellular fractions, that some integral membrane PCs of the brain are covalently attached to lipid, and that levels of many brain PCs change significantly during development from late fetal stages to adulthood
Summary
The behaviors of developing neural cells-e.g., directed cell migration, axon outgrowth and navigation, synaptogenesis, and selective cell death-require the precise orchestration of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. The results indicate that a wide variety of heparan sulfate and chondroitin sulfate PGs can be identified in the mammalian brain, that individual PGs associate with particular subcellular fractions, that some integral membrane PCs of the brain are covalently attached to lipid, and that levels of many brain PCs change significantly during development from late fetal stages to adulthood. Using this approach, it may be possible to identify PCs with biochemical properties and patterns of expression suggestive of involvement in particular developmental events. The specificity of interaction of such PCs with appropriate neural PC binding proteins could be evaluated
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