Comparison of Structure and Biological Activity of Natural Polypeptide from Velvet Antlers of Cervus elaphus with Those of Synthesized Polypeptide

Biochemical techniques including ion-exchange chromatography, gel filtration chromatography and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography(RP-HPLC) were used to isolate and purify the natural polypeptide from velvet antler(nVAP) of Cervus elaphus(C. elaphus), which has a molecular weight of 3215.8 and the primary structure of VLSAADKSNVKAAWGKVGGNAPAFGAEALLRM. The homology of the protein sequence in nVAP with known protein sequence is less than 50%, suggesting that nVAP appears to be a new bioactive substance. At a level of 0.4―50 μg/mL, nVAP promotes mitosis in epidermal cells, chondrocytes and NIH3T3 fibroblasts primarily cultured in a significant way. Given that a yield of high-purity nVAP isolated from C. elaphus is 0.001%, nVAP is artificially synthesized to prepare synthetic velvet antler polypeptide(sVAP) according to its primary structure. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis(SDS-PAGE) of sVAP shows a single band, and its HPLC spectrum displays a single peak. The matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry(MALDI-TOF-MS) was used to identify sVAP to be of a molecular weight of 3200 and the consistency between primary structures of sVAP and nVAP. Bioactivity test shows that at a dose of 5―40 μg/mL, sVAP promotes the proliferation of primarily cultured epidermal cells and NIH3T3 cell line. From the traditional Chinese medicine theory, velvet antler from Cervus nippon(C. nippon) and velvet antler from C. elaphus are considered as the same medicine, but differences between biochemical base and pharmacological effect of these two velvet antlers have been observed. We compared the total polypeptide mapping of the two velvet antlers, discovering that nVAP is active polypeptide and only exists in the velvet antler of C. elaphus. sVAP is similar to nVAP in physicochemical property and biological activity. These studies extend the possible utility of sVAP to be the promising compound to prepare velvet antler polypeptide of C. elaphus.