2019 Volume 63 Issue 2 Pages 55-61
Xerostomia is a symptom growing in the elderly, and associated with reduced salivary flow and increased salivary viscosity. Salivary mucins are responsible for the viscous property of the saliva. This study introduces aging alterations of a salivary gland by using submandibular glands of mice as a model. Supported molecular matrix electrophoresis (SMME) is a membrane electrophoresis to characterize mucins. Using SMME, we revealed that submandibular glands of the aged mice produced unknown mucin-like molecule that was absent in the glands of young mice. O-Glycosylations of the unknown mucin-like molecule are characterized by high ratio of sialoglycans to neutral glycans. The increase of sialoglycan-content may be attributed to the increased expression of the sialyl transferase genes, ST6GalNAc I and ST6GalNAc II, in the submandibular gland in the aged mice.
