Interaction of arabinogalactan with mucins

Arabinogalactan is a naturally-occurring, densely branched, polysaccharide mainly made-up of galactose and arabinose with variable amounts of uronic acids, which received attention for several industrial and biomedical applications. The ability of Western Larch arabinogalactan to interact with mucins was assessed by both classical gel filtration chromatography and frontal chromatography on Sephacryl S300 resin. The shift of arabinogalactan elution volume in classical gel filtration chromatography induced by both bovine submaxillary mucin and porcine gastric mucin resulted useful for revealing the occurrence of an interaction between arabinogalactan and mucins. A frontal gel chromatography, in which arabinogalactan is used as eluent, enabled a dissociation constant of 5 x 10(-6) M to be measured for the arabinogalactan-bovine submaxillary mucin complex, with approximately 50 equivalents of arabinogalactan bound per mucin mole. The mucoadhesivity of arabinogalactan may be a relevant feature for its biomedical and industrial applications.