The Derivatograph has been found to be suitable for the investigation of biopolymers consisting of polysaccharides and proteins. It could be demonstrated that interactions between the macromolecules of the collagen-proteoglycan-glycoprotein complexes significantly influence the thermal stability of the individual components.Studies concerning physiological and pathological changes in the composition and structure of connective tissues are at tl-~e focus of interest of biological and medical research.The literature contains a great amount of information on the chemical composition of connective tissues, obtained by the analysis of fractions from various extraction-fractionation procedures. However, the extractability of the different tissue components is a function not only of the chemical composition of the tissue, but also of the original macromolecular structure (degree of intra-and intermolecular crosslinks) of the biological material. Thus, the yields and compositions of the fractions obtained by a given extraction method from different tissue samples may be characteristically different, depending on the source of the tissue (species and organ differences), the stage of development (age-related changes) and the condition of health of the individual (pathological alterations). However, these differences are often not reflected in the results of chemical analysis (hexose, hexosamine, hexuronic acid, hydroxyproline, etc. determinations). In our experiments a complex thermoanalytical method [1] was applied to study various collagen-proteoglycan-glycoprotein complexes prepared from different connective tissues by the method of Robert et al. [2]. Thermal analysis was successfully used in our previous investigations for the quantitative determination of polysaccharides [3], for the characterization of protein structure [4], and for the estimation of age-related [5,6] and pathological [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] changes in proteoglycan-and collagen-containing biological tissues. Materials and MethodsFibrinogen (for the preparation of glycopeptides and S-sulfo-fibrinogen) and ovalbumin were purchased from Sigma (St. Louis). Purified bovine fibrinogen, fibrin and orosomucoid (Cohn fraction VI) for thermoanalytical studies were .1. Thermal Anal. 7, 1975

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