Solid-state NMR compositional analysis of sputum from people with cystic fibrosis

People with the genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF) often have chronic airway infections and produce airway secretions called sputum. A better understanding of sputum composition is desired in order to track changes in response to CF therapeutics and to improve laboratory models for the study of CF airway infections. The glycosylated protein mucin is a primary component. Along with extracellular DNA, mucin gives rise to the high viscoelasticity of sputum, which inhibits airway clearance and is thought to promote chronic airway infections in people with CF. Past studies of sputum composition identified additional biomolecular components of sputum including other proteins, both glycosylated and not glycosylated, free amino acids, and lipids. Typically, studies of sputum, as well as other complex biological materials, have focused on soluble or isolated components. Solid-state NMR is not limited to the study of soluble components. Instead, it can provide molecular-level information about insoluble biological samples. Additionally, solid-state NMR can provide information about sample composition without requiring any processing of the sample, eliminating the possibility of misestimating certain components due to insolubility or potential sample loss in isolation steps. In this study, we used both ¹³C and ³¹P CPMAS to investigate the total composition of sputum samples obtained from six people with CF. We compared these spectra to those of commercially available mucin, DNA, and phospholipid samples. Lastly, we performed complementary biochemical analyses to identify specific proteins present in the sputum samples. Overall, our findings provide insight into the composition of unprocessed sputum samples from people with CF, which can be used as a benchmark for future investigations of CF and infections in the airways of people with CF. Further, this study provides opportunities to expand the solid-state NMR approach to include dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) to obtain high-resolution information of sputum and similar biological samples that are not feasible to isotopically enrich.