Purification of Gonad-Stimulating Substance Obtained From Radial Nerves of the Starfish, Asterias Amurensis

Purification of starfish gonad-stimulating substance (GSS), which induces shedding of gametes and oocyte maturation, was carried out using lyophilized radial nerves of Asterias amurensis as source material. In the first series of experiments, 1.3 mg of the purified GSS, which induced spawning at a concentration of 0.0096 μg/ml, was isolated from acetone powder of lyophilized radial nerves of 7,360 starfish through several steps of purification procedures consisting of gel-filtrations on Sephadex G–50 and G–25 columns of various sizes and ion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex columns by gradient as well as step-wise elution. With this sample, the molecular weight and amino acid composition of GSS were estimated. Another series of experiments, conducted on a similar amount of material with purification procedures which were essentially the same as those of the first series except for employing 2 steps of partition chromatography instead of extensive gel-filtration, gave about 0.1 mg of purified sample which served as material for studies of the amino acid composition and electrophoretic properties of GSS. The molecular weight of Asterias GSS was found to be about 2,100, as determined with the sedimentation equilibrium method. GSS seemed to consist of the following 22 amino acid residues: aspartic acid (2), threonine (1), serine (6), glutamic acid (1), proline (1), glycine (4), alanine (2), valine (1), isoleucine (1), leucine (1), histidine (1), and ornithine (1). The isoelectric point of GSS was found to be at about pH 4.5 as determined by the isoelectric focusing method.