Department of Chemistry, Osaka University College of Science.
Sugar chains of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) from human peripheral-blood lymphocytes (PBL) were liberated by hydrazinolysis. After N-acetylation, the reducing end residues of the sugar chains were tagged with 2-aminopyridine and the pyridylamino (PA-) derivatives were purified by gel filtration and reversed-phase HPLC. Five major PA-sugar chains were obtained. The structure of each PA-sugar chain was estimated by comparing its elution times on anion exchange, reversed-phase, and size-fractionation HPLC with those of PA-sugar chains of IFN-gamma from the human myelomonocyte cell line HBL-38 (Yamamoto, S. et al. (1989) J. Biochem. 105, 547-555) as standards, and also by comparison of their elution times after partial desialylation. The results showed that IFN-gamma (PBL) contained mono- and disialo-biantennary structures with 0 or 1 mol of fucose residue, as found for IFN-gamma (HBL-38), but the N-acetylneuraminyl alpha 2-6 linkage was dominant in IFN-gamma (PBL), unlike IFN-gamma (HBL-38), which contains both N-acetylneuraminyl alpha 2-3 and alpha 2-6 linkages.