Collagens Extraction from Pancreatic Tissues

Pancreatic tissues were prepared for each rat strain (Lewis and SD). Tissues (n = 8 for each rat strain) were divided into small pieces (typically 40–60 mg) on ice. The tissue pieces were then homogenized with Micro Smash MS-100R (TOMY MEDICO, Tokyo, Japan) with stainless beads (φ 3mm). The homogenized solutions were subsequently applied to the CNMCS compartmental protein extraction kit (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA) to enrich collagens [20 (link), 21 (link)]. The samples were digested using S-Trap: Rapid Universal MS Sample Prep (PROTIFI, Huntington, NY, USA) with trypsin according to the manufacturer’s instructions.