Quantification of Intestinal Mucins
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Intestinal mucins are glycoproteins containing a very high proportion of carbohydrate, up to 90%, and they can occur either
in a membrane-bound or a soluble form (1
). The general structure of these molecules includes discrete C
-terminal and N
-terminal regions, which are relatively poorly glycosylated, at either end of a long repeating structure, up to 50 repeats,
which is heavily O
-glycosylated on serine and threonine residues the first sugar in each oligosaccharide always being N
-acetyl-galactosamine (2
). These oligosaccharide chains can vary between 1 and about 15 saccharides. The C
- and N
-terminal regions are likely to be of importance in determining the membranous or secreted nature of the molecule (2
).
