This can only be addressed reliably in cells isolated from the colon of the wild type and Kcnip3-/- mouse followed by separating extracellular pool of mucins from the cells, and subsequently quantitating the intracellular and extracellular pool by dot blotting as we have shown here for the colonic cancer cells. Here, KCNIP3 is linked to malignant colon neoplasm.