The birth announcement for hyaluronan occurred in a Journal of Biological Chemistry article by Karl Meyer (Fig.1) and his laboratory assistant John Palmer in 1934 (1).1 They isolated a “polysaccharide acid of high molecular weight” from bovine vitreous that contained a “uronic acid, an amino sugar, and possibly a pentose” but no sulfates (and as it turned out, no pentoses either). They proposed “for convenience, the name ‘hyaluronic acid,‘ from hyaloid (vitreous) + uronic acid.” It is fitting, therefore, that this minireview series on this fascinating, often enigmatic macromolecule is being inaugurated by reproducing this classic paper from the Journal.
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McDonald et al. (2002) studied this question.
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