High‐performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS) was used to characterize the water‐soluble and water‐insoluble fractions of human fetal eye lens crystallins. This age group was selected since their crystallins are not expected to have accumulated significant amounts of either age‐ or cataract‐related post‐translational modifications owing to their young age. This analysis permitted the identification and determination of the extent of post‐translational modifications for a range of crystallins in a single procedure. The excellent agreement between the calculated and experimental molecular weights from HPLC/MS implies that the published sequences for the crystallins αA2, αB2, βA3, βB2 and γC are correct. This agreement also demonstrates that these proteins do not contain any previously undetected post‐translational modifications. In addition, the molecular weights for many crystallins with unknown sequences and/or post‐translational modifications were determined to within several mass units. This appears to be the first reported analysis of the post‐translational modifications occurring in crystallins from this age group. By providing the molecular weights of the native human crystallins, this study provides a baseline for future comparisons of the age‐ and cataract‐related post‐translational modifications of human lens crystallins.
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He et al. (1995) studied this question.