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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

Detection of Glycosaminoglycans by Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis and Silver Staining
Published on: February 25, 2021
A One-Bead-Per-Saccharide (1BPS) Model for Glycosaminoglycans
Saber Shakibi1, Patrick R Onck1, Erik Van der Giessen1
1Micromechanics of Materials, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are polysaccharide compounds that play key roles in various biological processes. GAGs are important structural components of cartilage and the extracellular matrix of the brain. Due to the large size of these polysaccharides, coarse-grained approaches are indispensable for modeling these biopolymers. We develop a one-bead-per-saccharide model of chondroitin sulfates and hyaluronic acid based on an existing three-bead-per-saccharide coarse-grained model. Our coarse graining is carried out by using iterative Boltzmann inversion (IBI), including an additional coupling potential to incorporate the correlation between dihedral angles. The predictions of the model are verified against those of the existing three-bead-per-saccharin model and the experimental radius of gyration for hyaluronic acid.
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