Quantification of Intestinal Mucins

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 ).