Title

Molecular structural differences between Type-2-diabetic and healthy glycogen

Document Type

Article

Publication details

Sullivan, MA, Li, J, Li, C, Vilaplana, F, Stapleton, D, Gray-Weale, AA, Bowen, S, Zheng, L & Gilbert, RG 2011, 'Molecular structural differences between Type-2-diabetic and healthy glycogen', Biomacromolecules, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 1983-6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/bm2006054

Peer Reviewed

Peer-Reviewed

Abstract

Glycogen is a highly branched glucose polymer functioning as a glucose buffer in animals. Multiple-detector size exclusion chromatography and fluorophore-assisted carbohydrate electrophoresis were used to examine the structure of undegraded native liver glycogen (both whole and enzymatically debranched) as a function of molecular size, isolated from the livers of healthy and db/db mice (the latter a type 2 diabetic model). Both the fully branched and debranched levels of glycogen structure showed fundamental differences between glycogen from healthy and db/db mice. Healthy glycogen had a greater population of large particles, with more R particles (tightly linked assemblages of smaller