Lectins are sugar binding proteins and glycoproteins, and are widely distributed from bacteria to humans. Lectins are easily detected by agglutination of erythrocytes, known as hemagglutination. Stillmark first reported in his doctoral thesis that the extract from beans of the castor tree, Ricinus communis, contains lectin by the method of hemagglutination (Stillmark, 1888). Since each lectin b...

Recent progress in glycobiology has revealed that cell surface oligosaccharides play an essential role in recognition events. More precisely, these saccharides may be complexed by lectins, carbohydrate-binding proteins other than enzymes and antibodies, able to recognise sugars in a highly specific manner. The ubiquity of lectin-carbohydrate interactions opens enormous potential for their explo...

Human Tamm-Horsfall glycoprotein inhibits lymphocyte transformation induced by leucoagglutinin and haemagglutinin from Phaseolus vulgaris (red kidney bean). The glycoprotein interacts with the two lectins, giving insoluble precipitates. The interaction with leucoagglutinin is highly specific, and the shape of the precipitin curve is that of an antigen-antibody reaction; precipitation is specifi...

Lectins are one of several types of biological resources considered as potential medicinal importance for therapeutic agents. The present review deals with variety, sugar specificity and the medicinal importance of lectins from freshwater and marine invertebrates. The potent medicinal usage of the various types of the lectins from freshwater and marine non-chordates, which are comparatively wel...

A limitation in our understanding of coral disease pathology and cellular pathogenesis is a lack of reagents to characterize coral cells. We evaluated the utility of plant lectins to stain tissues of a dominant coral, Montipora capitata, from Hawaii. Of 22 lectins evaluated, nine of these stained structures in the upper or basal body wall of corals. Specific structures revealed by lectins that ...

Commonly, plant and invertebrate lectins are accepted glycohistochemical tools for the analysis of normal and altered structures of glycans in histology and pathology. Mammalian lectins and neoglycoproteins are recent additions to this panel for the detection of lectin-reactive carbohydrate epitopes and glycoligand-binding sites. The binding profiles of these three types of probes were comparat...

Prey selection governs species interactions and regulates physiological energetics of individuals and populations. Suspension-feeding bivalves represent key species in coastal and estuarine systems for their ecological and economic value. These animals are able to sort and selectively ingest nutritious microalgae from dilute and composite mixtures of particulate matter. This aptitude was sugges...

OBJECTIVE The development of vertebrae is a complex phenomenon that is correlated with distinct morphological and biochemical alterations in the paraxial mesenchyme and glycoconjugates. The purpose of this study is to investigate the glycosylation pattern in paraxial mesenchyme-forming vertebrae by using the lectin histochemical technique. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this descriptive-analytic st...

The roots of 7-d seedlings of two winter wheat cultivars differing in frost resistance were used to study changes in lectin activity using the inhibitor of microtubule polymerization oryzalin (15 μM) in unhardened (23oC) and hardened (2–3oC, 3–7 d) plants. Plants were grown with the antagonist of calmodulin, chlorpromazine (250 μM) or without chlorpromazine in medium. It was shown that the dyna...