Scalable Extraction of Airway Mucins from Porcine Trachea.

Mucins are a major component of the innate defense system in the airways and their biological functions are important to consider in pulmonary disease research. However, the available mucus models for basic research relevant to the lung can be difficult to acquire in sufficient quantity to conduct such studies. Here, we present a new strategy to isolate airway mucins from pig trachea at the milligram to gram scale for use in pulmonary disease research.

Mucus physically restricts influenza A viral particle access to the epithelium.

Prior work suggests influenza A virus (IAV) crosses the airway mucus barrier in a sialic acid-dependent manner through the actions of the viral envelope proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. However, host and viral factors that influence how efficiently mucus traps IAV remain poorly defined. In this work, we assessed how the physicochemical properties of mucus influence its ability to effectively capture IAV with altered sialic acid preference using fluorescence video microscopy and multiple particle tracking.