Abstract
Glycoproteins were extracted and partially purified from heads of adults of the silkworm, Bombyx mori. Physiological activity of the glycoproteins was also examined using five different bioassay systems. The yield of the glycoproteins separated by ConA-Sepharose 4B affinity chromatography was about 43mg from 120g of the starting materials. The molecular weights of the main glycoproteins were 15, 000, 30, 000 and 50, 000 as determined by gel-filtration on Sephadex G-75. Neurohormonal activities (prothoracicotropic hormones, diapause hormone, eclosion hormone) were not detected in the glycoprotein fraction. Effect of the glycoprotein fraction on the ovarian development of isolated abdomens was investigated, but no gonadotropic action could be detected: the ovaries grew only when 20-hydroxyecdysone was injected into the isolated abdomens.
