Vol. 111, No. 3, 1983 BIOCHEMICAL AND BIOPHYSICAL RESEARCH COMMUNlCATlONS March 29, 1983 Pages 865-871 STRUCTURAL DIFFERENCES OF HEPARAN SULFATES ACCORDING TO THE TISSUE AND SPECIES OF ORIGIN Carl P. Dietrich, Helena B. Nader and Anita H. Straus Departamento de BioquFmica, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Caixa Postal 20372, S;io Paulo, SP., Brazil Received January 26, 1983 SUMMARY: Some structural features of thirteen heparan sulfates isolated from different mammalian tissues and species are reported. Two N-acetylated disac- charides, one of then O-sulfated and two N-sulfated disaccharides, one of then 6-sulfated are formed from these compounds by the combined action of heparitinases I and II from Flavobacterium heparinum. The relative proportions of the four disaccharide units vary quite significantly among the thirteen heparan sulfates indicating that the structure of these polymers are tissue and species specific. Based on the frequency of appearance of each one of the disaccharides it was calculated that 1036 types of heparan sulfates might theoretically be found. The possible role of these polyanions in cell-cell recognition is discussed in view of the present findings. INTRODUCTION: Most of the structural studies of heparan sulfate reported so far have been performed in a fraction obtained from beef lung tissue during the commercial preparation of heparin (1). These studies led to the proposal that heparan sulfate was a family of anionic polymers with large variations in molecular weight and charge density (2). Later it was observed that the beef lung preparation was indeed a mixture of several distinct glycosaminoglycans, one of then possessing the characteristics attributable to heparan sulfate and others with structures similar to heparin but with low molecular weight (3,4). With the aid of heparitinases prepared from F. heparinum it was possible to show that heparan sulfate was compose,d of four distinct disaccharide units (5-9) whose proposed structures are shown in Fig. 1. We have recently reported that heparan sulfate obtained from different tissues of several mammalian species had distinct average molecular weights and charge densities according to the tissue and species of origin (8). These data suggested to US that the proportions of the disaccharide units of heparan sulfate could also vary according to the tissue and species analysed. Structural studies of thirteen types of heparan sulfates obtained from several tissues of different mammalian species are now described. Of fundamntal importance is the finding that all heparan sulfates contained the four 0006-291 X/83 $1 .50 Copyright @ 1983 by Academic Press, Inc. 865 All rights of reproduction in anv form reserved.