The physiological significance of transferrin microheterogeneity : an interpretation of the role of N-linked glycans in transferrin and iron metabolism /

The starting point for this thesis was the observation that when attempts are made to separate monoferric transferrins from diferric transferrin by isoelectric focusing, in addition to what was thought to represent the pure monoferric transferrins, a great number of additional bands are found whose presence cannot be explained by differences in iron content. Treatment of serum samples with sialidase before isoelectric focusing decreases the number of additional bands. This variability in electrophoretic behaviour can be quantified by comparing relative amounts of components as measured through crossed immunoelectrophoresis after separation by isoelectric focusing. From a screening experiment it appeared that different patterns could be obtained in a number of pathological conditions, which led us to further investigate this phenomenon.