Perlecan was originally isolated from a tumor cell line and shown to be present in all native basement membranes. Perlecan is a large multidomain (five domains, labeled I-V) proteoglycan that binds to and cross-links many extracellular matrix (ECM) components and cell-surface molecules. Perlecan is synthesized by both vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells and deposited in the extracellular matrix. Perlecan is highly conserved across species and the available data indicate that it has evolved from ancient ancestors by gene duplication and exon shuffling.