Lectins: To Combat Infections

摘要: The term “lectin” was coined by William Boyd in 1954 from the Greek word “legere” which means “to select” or bind”. Lectins and hemagglutinins are proteins/glycoproteins of non-immune origin, have at least one non-catalytic domain that exhibits reversible binding to specific monosaccharides oligosaccharides (Lis Sharon, 1986). lectinmonosaccharide interactions relatively very weak dissociation constants lie millimolar range. However, nature for multimeric sugars several folds higher indicating multiple protein-carbohyrate involved recognition events (Ambrosi et al., 2005). Thus, lectins multivalent can bind carbohydrate moieties on surface erythrocytes agglutinate erythrocytes, without altering properties carbohydrates (Lam Ng, 2011). ubiquitous extensively distributed nature. Many hundreds these been isolated varied sources like plants, viruses, bacteria, invertebrates vertebrates but all, different show little similarity. invaluable tools detection, isolation, characterization glycoconjugates, primarily glycoproteins, histochemistry cells tissues examination changes occur cell surfaces during physiological pathological processes, differentiation cancer (Sharon Lis, 2004).