Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Discovery of a MUC3B gene reconstructs the membrane mucin gene cluster on human chromosome 7

Tiange Lang, View ORCID ProfileThaher Pelaseyed
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.31.474548
Tiange Lang
1Big Data Decision Institution, Jinan University, Tianhe, Guangzhou, China
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Thaher Pelaseyed
2Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Gothenburg, Box 440, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Thaher Pelaseyed
  • For correspondence: thaher.pelaseyed@medkem.gu.se
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Human tissue surfaces are coated with mucins, a family of macromolecular sugar-laden proteins serving diverse functions from lubrication to formation of selective biochemical barriers against harmful microorganisms and molecules. Membrane mucins are a distinct group of mucins that are attached to epithelial cell surfaces where they create a dense glycocalyx facing the extracellular environment. All mucin proteins carry long stretches of tandemly repeated sequences that undergo extensive O-linked glycosylation to form linear mucin domains. However, the repetitive nature of mucin domains makes them prone to recombination and render their genetic sequences particularly difficult to read with standard sequencing technologies. As a result, human mucin genes suffer from significant sequence gaps that have hampered investigation of gene function in health and disease. Here we leveraged a recent human genome assembly to identify a previously unmapped MUC3B gene located within a cluster of four structurally related membrane mucin genes that we entitle the MUC3 cluster at q22 locus in chromosome 7. We found that MUC3B shares high sequence identity with the known MUC3A gene, and that the two genes are governed by evolutionarily conserved regulatory elements. Furthermore, we show that MUC3A, MUC3B, MUC12 and MUC17 in the human MUC3 cluster are exclusively expressed in intestinal epithelial cells. Our results complete existing genetic gaps in the MUC3 cluster that is a conserved genetic unit during primate evolution. We anticipate our results to be the starting point for detection of new polymorphisms in the MUC3 cluster associated with human diseases. Moreover, our study provides the basis for exploration of intestinal mucin gene function in widely used experimental models such as human intestinal organoids and genetic mouse models.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • ↵3 Lead contact

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted January 01, 2022.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Discovery of a MUC3B gene reconstructs the membrane mucin gene cluster on human chromosome 7
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Discovery of a MUC3B gene reconstructs the membrane mucin gene cluster on human chromosome 7
Tiange Lang, Thaher Pelaseyed
bioRxiv 2021.12.31.474548; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.31.474548
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Discovery of a MUC3B gene reconstructs the membrane mucin gene cluster on human chromosome 7
Tiange Lang, Thaher Pelaseyed
bioRxiv 2021.12.31.474548; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.31.474548

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Genetics
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3580)
  • Biochemistry (7534)
  • Bioengineering (5488)
  • Bioinformatics (20709)
  • Biophysics (10266)
  • Cancer Biology (7942)
  • Cell Biology (11597)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6576)
  • Ecology (10151)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13565)
  • Genetics (9504)
  • Genomics (12801)
  • Immunology (7891)
  • Microbiology (19472)
  • Molecular Biology (7624)
  • Neuroscience (41939)
  • Paleontology (307)
  • Pathology (1253)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2182)
  • Physiology (3254)
  • Plant Biology (7017)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1291)
  • Synthetic Biology (1944)
  • Systems Biology (5412)
  • Zoology (1109)