Reevaluation of the Subunit Molecular Weights of Soybean 11S Globulin

Abstract

The acidic and basic subunits are the main constituents of soybean 11S globulin. Each of these two subunits consists of three major polypeptides of similar size. The molecular weights of the acidic and basic subunits have been previously estimated to be 37,000 and 22,000, respectively, by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (Catsimpoolas et al, J. Set Food. Agric., 22, 448 (1971)). Reevaluation of the molecular weights by 6 m guanidine gel chromatography gave the values of 28,000 and 18,000, respectively. These are supported by results of equilibrium sedimentation in the same solvent. The previously reported values seem to have been overestimated, especially for the acidic subunits. The overestimations seem to be related to the high percentage of acidic amino acids, which causes the conformation of the SDS-protein polypeptide complexes of these subunits to deviate from those of proteins usually employed as standards for molecular weight estimations.