Existence of lysine-derived cross-linking in connectin, an elastic protein in muscle

Abstract

In the course of isolating and identifying the reducible compounds of connectin fibrils from chicken breast muscle, we found the presence of the lysine-derived cross-link, aldimine form of lysinonorleucine. The failure to detect this compound by Robins and Rucklidge (1980) might be due to treatment of the samples with a crude collagenase preparation, which resulted in complete digestion of connectin. The results from the present study strongly indicate that connectin participates in the lysyl oxidase-mediated cross-linking system which occurs in collagen and elastin.