Contaminants in commercial preparations of 'purified' small leucine-rich proteoglycans may distort mechanistic studies.

ABSTRACT: The present study reports the perplexing results that came about because of seriously impure commercially available reagents. Commercial reagents and chemicals are routinely ordered by scientists and expected to have been rigorously assessed for their purity. Unfortunately, we found this assumption to be risky. Extensive work was carried out within our laboratory using commercially sourced preparations of the small leucine-rich proteoglycans (SLRPs), decorin and biglycan, to investigate their influence on nerve cell growth. Unusual results compelled us to analyse the composition and purity of both preparations of these proteoglycans (PGs) using both mass spectrometry (MS) and Western blotting, with and without various enzymatic deglycosylations. Commercial 'decorin' and 'biglycan' were fou

SUBMITTER: Brown SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5234103 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature