title: Isolation and fractionation of human gastric mucus gel.
abstract: A high yield method for collecting mucus from resection stomach specimens was developed. Lyophilized samples of mucus were totally fractionated by stepwise extraction in three different solvents: 0.2 M Tris-HCl buffer, pH 8.0, 1% SDS solution in the same buffer and 0.2 M 2-mercaptoethanol solution in a Tris-HCl-1% SDS buffer. The fractions obtained were submitted to gel filtration, SDS-polyacrylamide-agarose gel electrophoresis and analyzed for their protein and glycoprotein components. All fractions differed in their carbohydrate-to-protein ratio and after reduction with 2-mercaptoethanol in the presence of SDS, released a substantial amount of low molecular weight components. A high molecular weight glycoprotein was present in all the fractions, which could be split into glycoprotein subunits with 2-mercaptoethanol in dissociating conditions only. The properties of the human gastric mucus as demonstrated in these studies differ in some respects from the pig and suggest its more complicated nature.
mesh_terms: D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000378:metabolism*; D005782:Gels; D006801:Humans; D009093:Mucus / Q000032:analysis*; D010434:Pepsin A / Q000378:metabolism; D012995:Solubility
chemical_list: D005782:Gels; D010434:Pepsin A