Studies on Reduced Wool III. Starch-Gel Electrophoresis of Extracted Wool Proteins

Abstract

Starch-gel electrophoresis in 8M urea has been used to demonstrate the presence of many components in wool protein fractions extracted from reduced and alkylated wool. All preparations of low-sulphur wool proteins gave mUltiple bands on starch gel in 8M urea even though some of these had previously been fractionated to give a single peak using moving-boundary electrophoresis in the absence of 8M urea. The heterogeneity suggested by these results is in Rccord with that found by chromatography of the proteins on DEAE-cellulose in buffers containing 8M urea. With stepwise elution from DEAE-cellulose it is possible to obtain fractions responsible for various sections of the starch-gel electrophoretic pattern.