Saliva contains two major families of mucins (MG1 and MG2); the polypeptide of the smaller of these glycoproteins (MG2) has been assigned as the product of the MUC7 gene. In this study we have devised a rapid two-step procedure that recovers this glycoprotein essentially free of other components and in sufficient quantity to enable physical and self-interaction studies. Raw saliva was solubiliz...

Quantitative description of how proteins fold under experimental conditions remains a challenging problem. Experiments often use urea and guanidinium chloride to study folding whereas the natural variable in simulations is temperature. To bridge the gap, we use the molecular transfer model that combines measured denaturant-dependent transfer free energies for the peptide group and amino acid re...

1. Primary cultures of chondrocytes from the Swarm rat chondrosarcoma were labelled with either [3H]glucosamine or [14C]glucosamine, and hyaluronate synthesized by the cells was isolated from the cell layer. Parallel cultures were labelled with either [3H]serine or [3H]lysine, and identical fractions were isolated from the cell layer. Some cultures were dual-labelled. 2. In cultures labelled wi...

The mouse model (Cftr(tm1UNC)/Cftr(tm1UNC)) for cystic fibrosis (CF) shows mucus accumulation and increased Muc1 mucin mRNA levels due to altered splicing (Hinojosa-Kurtzberg AM, Johansson MEV, Madsen CS, Hansson GC, and Gendler SJ. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 284: G853-G862, 2003). However, it is not known whether Muc1 is a major mucin contributing to the increased mucus and why CF...

Domains rich in cationic amino acids are ubiquitous in peptides with the ability to cross cell membranes, which is likely related to the binding of such polypeptides to anionic groups on the membrane surface. To shed more light on these interactions, we investigated specific interactions between basic amino acids and oligopeptides thereof and anions by means of electrophoretic experiments and m...

A phosphorylated glycoprotein was purified from the mixture of proteins extracted by demineralization of rat bone with 0.5 M EDTA in 4 M guanidinium chloride. A high level of purity for the preparation was indicated by a single band on sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-gradient gel electrophoresis, sedimentation equilibrium ultracentrifugal data, and by automated Edman degradation results. The molec...

Aspartate aminotransferase from Sulfolobus solfataricus (SsAspAT) is an extremely thermophilic and thermostable dimeric enzyme which retains its structure and reaches maximal activity at 100 degrees C. The structural stability of this protein was investigated by coupling isothermally and thermally induced denaturation studies to molecular modeling. Gel filtration analysis indicated that SsAspAT...