Fig. 5. Modulated dynamics and water contact of polysaccharides in A. fumigatus mutants.

The NMR data of β-1,3-glucan (B), α-1,3-glucan (A), and chitin (Ch) are plotted in blue, green, and orange, respectively. a Representative 2D ¹³C–¹³C spectra with 0 s (top) and 1 s (bottom) z-filter time for measuring ¹³C–T₁ relaxation. Signals of α-1,3-glucans are effectively retained after 1 s, indicating the slow ¹³C–T₁ relaxation of this polysaccharide. b Box and whisker diagram plotting the ¹³C T₁ relaxation time constants of β-1,3-glucan (B; n = 19), α-1,3-glucan (A; n = 6), and chitin (Ch; n = 13) for parental and mutant samples. The box starts from lower quartile to upper quartile, with the horizontal bar and the open circle presenting the median and mean, respectively. The length of the whiskers is determined by the product of 1.5 and interquartile range, with outliers shown as separate dots. c Representative buildup curves for the water-edited spectrum of parental (black) and GM-deficient (blue) samples. d Data representing the buildup time constants that reflect the degree of water retention at various carbon sites of different polysaccharides. Time constants for β-1,3-glucan (n = 5), α-1,3-glucan (n = 4) and chitin (n = 4) are generated from the fit to exponential function. Each point reflects the best-fit value for buildup time constant ± s.e. Shaded area represents the data of β-1,3-glucan. The data plotted in (b, d) are summarized in Supplementary Tables 8, 9, respectively.