Enzymatic hydrolysis studies of arabinogalactan-protein structure from Acacia gum: The self-similarity hypothesis of assembly from a common building block

Finally, the structural similarities found in enzyme-treated AGP together with the theoretical calculations to analytically probe the type of branching would suggest that AGP would be made of a self-similar assembly of two types of building blocks, the second being a five-fold repetition of the first one, for which palindromic amino acid sequence would ensure a self-ordering of carbohydrate moieties along the polypeptide chains. The cleavage would therefore lead to hydrolysed building blocks with similar secondary structures and conformations whatever the enzyme used.