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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1984 May;81(9):2684–2688. doi: 10.1073/pnas.81.9.2684

Aging of proteins: isolation and identification of a fluorescent chromophore from the reaction of polypeptides with glucose.

S Pongor, P C Ulrich, F A Bencsath, A Cerami
PMCID: PMC345134  PMID: 6585821

Abstract

Proteins exposed to glucose over long periods are known to undergo physicochemical changes including crosslinking and formation of brown fluorescent pigments of poorly characterized structure. Acid hydrolysis of both browned poly(L-lysine) and browned bovine serum albumin is found to release a major fluorescent chromophore, which after alkalinization is extractable into organic solvents and which can be purified by silica gel chromatography. The fluorescence properties of this compound very closely resemble those of the bulk browned polypeptides. By NMR, mass spectroscopy, and chemical derivatization, this compound is assigned the structure 2-(2-furoyl)-4(5)-(2-furanyl)-1H-imidazole (FFI). Confirmation was obtained by independent chemical synthesis from furylglyoxal and ammonia. The incorporation of two peptide-derived amine nitrogens and two glucose residues in FFI strongly suggests that peptide-bound FFI precursors are implicated in the crosslinking of proteins by glucose in vivo. This reaction has potential implications in the understanding of glucose-mediated protein modifications and their role in the complications of diabetes and aging.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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