Barley mlg

Microbial XEH [63 (link)] was a generous gift from Novo Nordisk A/S, Bagsværd, Denmark. Lichenase (from Bacillus subtilis; 330 U mg⁻¹), β-d-glucosidase (from Aspergillus niger; 52 U mg^–1), cellobiohydrolase [CBH1, from Trichoderma longibrachiatum; 0.07 U mg^–1; possessing <1% endo-β-(1→3)-d-glucanase activity], cellulase (EGII, from T. longibrachiatum), cellulase (from A. niger), barley MLG (medium viscosity) and Iceland moss MLG (lichenan) were from Megazyme, Inc., Bray, Ireland. Merck (0.2 mm) silica-gel 60 TLC plates were from VWR (Lutterworth, U.K.). Tamarind xyloglucan was a generous gift from Dr K. Yamatoya (Dainippon Pharmaceutical Co., Osaka, Japan). Equisetum arvense MLG was purified as described previously [64 (link)]. Reductively tritiated XGOs ([³H]XGO-ols) were synthesised in-house, essentially as described by Hetherington and Fry [65 (link)], with XXXG from Megazyme and XXXGXXXG obtained by partial XEH digestion of tamarind xyloglucan. The specific radioactivities of [³H]XXXGol and [³H]XXXGXXXGol were ∼100 and 1.6 MBq mol^–1, respectively. Dialysis tubing (12–14-kDa cut-off) was from Medicell International, Ltd, London, U.K. Miracloth was from Calbiochem (http://www.emdbiosciences.com). Solvents were from Fisher Scientific, U.K. Other chemicals came from Sigma–Aldrich, U.K.