Abstract: The invention relates to the fibroblast proteoglycan, versican. The versican core protein has the amino acid sequence, and is encoded by the nucleotide sequence, as shown in FIG. 1. The nucleotide sequence and method of hyaluronic acid binding domain is provided and methods of preparing recombinant proteins having hyaluronic acid binding activity are provided. Such protein can be used to determine the presence of hyaluronic acid and as a vehicle to bring other molecules in contact with hyaluronic acid. The complete versican sequence will allow the production of the entire versican molecule to be used, for example, in tissue reconstruction. Nucleic acid probes are provided which are useful for detecting nucleic acid sequences encoding versican. The invention also provides antibodies reactive with versican.