Lectins are present in microorganisms, plants and animals and have attracted great interest due to their varied physiological roles in cell agglutination, anti-tumour, immunomodulatory, antifungal and antiviral effects. Legume lectins are important to the pharmaceuticals but they are produced in low amounts in the plant seeds. Moreover, the genes controlling these proteins are conditionally act...

Protein-carbohydrate interactions mediated by lectins have been recognized as key components of innate immunity in vertebrates and invertebrates, not only for recognition of potential pathogens, but also for participating in downstream effector functions, such as their agglutination, immobilization, and complement-mediated opsonization and killing. More recently, lectins have been identified as...

zona pellucida contains receptors for a variety of plant lectins, glycoproteins that bind to specific saccharide determinants (Oikawa, Yanagimachi & Nicol¬ son, 1973; Oikawa, Nicolson & Yanagimachi, 1974; Nicolson, Yanagimachi & Yanagimachi, 1975). Some of these lectins can bind to the zona pellucida and induce egg agglutination and/or cause changes in the ability of the exterior region of the ...

Cell fusion between mating type plus (mt+) and minus (mt-) gametes of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is analyzed structurally and subjected to experimental manipulation. Cell wall lysis, a necessary prelude to fusion, is shown to require flagellar agglutination between competent gametes; glutaraldehyde-fixed gametes ("corpses") of one mating type will elicit both agglutination and cell wall lysis in...

BACKGROUND The glycoconjugate content of sperms indicates their physiological and fertility properties. Lectin reactivity is indicative of intact, capacitated, and acrosome-reacted sperms. In the epididymis, sperms experience maturation, glycoconjugate modification, and simultaneously, higher L-carnitine (LC) concentrations. The aim of this project was to evaluate the effects of LC and Pentoxif...

The life cycle of the trypanosomatid Crithidia fasciculata is monogenetic, as the unique hosts of these parasites are different species of culicids. The comparison of these non-pathogenic microorganisms evolutionary close to other species of trypanosomatids that develop digenetic life cycles and cause chronic severe sickness to millions of people worldwide is of outstanding interest. A ground-b...

A transformed variant derived as a clone from normal 3T3 cells infected with simian virus 40 (SV40) has been found to possess a phenotype intermediate between that of normal cells and that characteristic of the transformed state, yet cells of the variant still test positively for the SV40-specific nuclear T-antigen. The variant exercises growth control, although not as stringently as do normal ...

This report describes a quantitative study of the agglutination of rat thymocytes with concanavalin A (ConA). The probability that two ConA-coated cells remain bound after centrifugation was determined over a wide range of lectin concentrations. The minimal force required to separate agglutinated cells and the number of ConA molecules bound per cell were measured in similar experimental conditi...