Detection and quantitation of mucins using chemical, lectin, and antibody methods

Detection and quantitation of mucins can be important in both the research and clinical settings. Applications may range from detection of potentially novel mucins present during purification from mucus, to quantitation of specific mucin core proteins or carbohydrate moieties present in clinical samples. This chapter discusses procedures and limitations of several different strategies available to detect and quantify these glycoproteins from biological samples, with a view to providing guidelines from which to select the best applicable techniques. Example protocols are then provided to give a starting point for development of a technique. Refer to Chapter 3 for detection of mucins in histological preparations (1); note, however, that many of the principles for selection of detection tools discussed herein are applicable to histological detection.