The mucopolysaccharides of bovine cornea.

The mucopolysaccharides isolated from various mesodermal tissues have, in several instances, been shown to consist of complex mixtures, and not of single compounds as was believed formerly. In view of the rather contradictory findings reported in the literature, it was thought advisable to reinvestigate the mucopolysaccharide fractions of the cornea. In this paper, the separation of three distinct non-dialyzable acid mucopolysaccharides is reported. These, in the order of their precipitation in our fractionation procedure, are (1) a chondroitin sulfate, (2) a uranic acid and hexosamine-containing polymer apparently similar to hyaluronic acid, and (3) a polymer composed of N-acetylglucosamine, galactose, and sulfate in equimolar proportions. This third compound, a novel type of sulfated mucopolysaccharide, we propose to name keratosulfate.