Breaking Down the Bottlebrush: Atomically Detailed Structural Dynamics of Mucins.

ABSTRACT: Mucins, the biomolecular components of mucus, are glycoproteins that form a thick physical barrier at all tissue-air interfaces, forming a first line of defense against pathogens. Structural features of mucins and their interactions with other biomolecules remain largely unexplored due to the challenges associated with their high-resolution characterization. Combining limited mass spectrometry glycomics and protein sequencing data, we present all-atom, explicitly solvated molecular dynamics simulations of a major respiratory mucin, MUC5B. We detail key forces and degrees of freedom imposed by the extensive O-glycosylation, which imbue the canonically observed bottlebrush-like structures to these otherwise intrinsically disordered protein backbones. We compare our simulation results

SUBMITTER: Kearns FL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11523070 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature