The use of natural-abundance high-resolution carbon-13 NMR in the study of mucus glycoproteins.

Natural-abundance 13C NMR was used to study samples of native mucus from dog trachea and purified mucus glycoprotein from hog stomach. Despite the large molecular weight of the molecules (several million) and visco-elastic nature of the gel, spectra were produced which could be resolved into individual sharp resonances which gave significant structural detail. These results indicate the potential use of this powerful technique in the study of mucus glycoprotein structure in the undegraded molecule.