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[29] Relaxin

1997; Academic Press; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0076-6879(97)89068-4

1557-7988

John D. Wade, Geoffrey W. Tregear,

Pregnancy-related medical research

In the early 1920s, Frederick Hisaw observed that injection of the serum of pregnant guinea pigs and rabbits into virgin guinea pigs shortly after estrus caused a dilation and relaxation of the pubic symphyses. A similar result was obtained when aqueous extracts of porcine corpora lutea were used. The active component was named “relaxin.” The availability of synthetic relaxin has enabled a number of important observations about the peptide to be made. As the predominant source of relaxin in the human is the ovary during pregnancy, it is not possible to obtain adequate amounts of the hormone for biological evaluation. The chapter describes general procedure for the preparation of human Gene 1 relaxin by the random chain combination approach, which can be successfully used for most native relaxins and of analogs of the peptide. The insulin-like heterodimeric structure of relaxin necessitates special considerations insofar as its chemical synthesis is concerned. Purified synthetic relaxin is characterized by a number of standard criteria including by mass spectrometry.