Conformational structure of respiratory mucus studied by laser correlation spectroscopy

Samples of respiratory mucus were obtained from the trachea of dogs and patients undergoing bronchoscopy. The samples were studied by laser correlation spectroscopy. The autocorrelation function of laser light scattered by both human and canine respiratory mucus was a single exponential in thick mucus or a double exponential in thin watery mucus. This finding suggests that, as in the case of uterine cervical mucus, the molecular structure of respiratory mucus is an ensemble of entangled, randomly-coiled glycoproteins forming a loose network of variable density rather than a covalently cross-linked molecular network as proposed in earlier studies.