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Updated: Jul 3, 2025

Detection of Glycosaminoglycans by Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis and Silver Staining
Published on: February 25, 2021
Coarse-Grained Model of Glycosaminoglycans for Biomolecular Simulations
Aishwary T Shivgan1,2, Jan K Marzinek2, Alexander Krah2
1National University of Singapore, Department of Biological Sciences, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore.
Abstract:
Proteoglycans contain glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) which are negatively charged linear polymers made of repeating disaccharide units of uronic acid and hexosamine units. They play vital roles in numerous physiological and pathological processes, particularly in governing cellular communication and attachment. Depending on their sulfonation state, acetylation, and glycosidic linkages, GAGs belong to different families. The high molecular weight, heterogeneity, and flexibility of GAGs hamper their characterization at atomic resolution, but this may be circumvented via coarse-grained (CG) approaches. In this work, we report a CG model for a library of common GAG types in their isolated or proteoglycan-linked states compatible with version 2.2 (v2.2) of the widely popular CG Martini force field. The model reproduces conformational and thermodynamic properties for a wide variety of GAGs, as well as matching structural and binding data for selected proteoglycan test systems. The parameters developed here may thus be employed to study a range of GAG-containing biomolecular systems, thereby benefiting from the efficiency and broad applicability of the Martini framework.
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