Porcine submaxillary mucin contains a cystine-rich, carboxyl-terminal domain in addition to a highly repetitive, glycosylated domain.

The sequence of a 3.65-kilobase cDNA encoding a large portion of the polypeptide chain of porcine submaxillary mucin (apomucin) has been completed. The encoded polypeptide contains 1150 residues with the carboxyl-terminal 240 residues forming a globular domain that is rich in half-cystine, but deficient in sites for oligosaccharide attachment. The remaining 910 residues preceding the half-cystine-rich domain appear devoid of secondary structures, but they are rich in serine and threonine to which the O-linked oligosaccharides are bound. The first 391 residues of apomucin contain several tandemly repeated, identical sequences of 81 residues. Blots of genomic DNA partially digested with restriction nucleases show that at least 25 of these identical repeats are present in apomucin. The amino acid composition of apomucin isolated in the absence of protease inhibitors was shown earlier (Eckhardt, A. E., Timpte, C. S., Abernethy, J. L., Toumadje, A., Johnson, W. C., Jr., and Hill, R. L. (1987) J. Biol. Chem. 282, 11339-11344) to be devoid of half-cystine. In contrast, the amino acid composition of mucin purified in the presence of protease inhibitors contains half-cystine in amounts predicted by the cDNA sequence and also suggests that this mucin has about 25 tandem repeats. Thus, apomucin contains at least 2800 amino acid residues. Moreover, immunoblots of apomucin prepared in the presence or the absence of protease inhibitors, with antibodies specific for the half-cystine-rich domains or the tandem repeat sequences, show that the half-cystine-rich domain is absent in apomucin unless protease inhibitors are present throughout. Both types of mucin, however, contain the highly repetitive sequences. The molecular weight of undegraded apomucin has not been established exactly, but gel filtration in 6 M guanidine hydrochloride suggests that it is considerably higher than 250,000. RNA blot analysis shows that apomucin mRNA is large and polydisperse in accord with the message size necessary to synthesize the large apomucin polypeptide. These structural features of apomucin suggest a model for the structure of the mucin molecule that correlates well with its reported properties.