Article history: Received on: 25/09/2012 Revised on: 10/10/2012 Accepted on: 19/10/2012 Available online: 28/10/2012 In addition to their high nutritional value, red algae are of great interest as a source of therapeutic substances. However, despite their abundance on the Lebanese coast red algae have never been studied before. Therefore, we attempted to study among the available biomass one of...

Murine class I molecules are ligands for Ly-49 molecules, a family of regulatory receptors expressed on murine NK cells. Since soluble sulfated mono- and polysaccharides interfere with the interaction of Ly-49A, a C-type lectin, and its class I ligand, Dd, it is possible that the oligosaccharides on class I molecules are sulfated and participate in Ly-49A binding. In this report, we show that H...

Fibroblast growth factor 2 (Fgf2) is involved in several biological functions. Fgf2 requires glycosaminoglycans, like chondroitin and dermatan sulfates (hereafter denoted CS/DS) as co-receptors. CS/DS are linear polysaccharides composed of repeating disaccharide units [-4GlcUAb1-3-GalNAc-b1-] and [-4IdoUAa1-3-GalNAc-b1-],which can be sulfated. Uronyl 2-O-sulfotransferase (Ust)introduces sulfati...

It has been previously shown that dextran sulfate administered to diabetic rats accumulates in the liver and kidney, and this could be due to a malfunction of the lysosomal digestive pathway. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression and activities of lysosomal enzymes that act upon proteins and sulfated polysaccharides in the livers of diabetic rats. Diabetes mellitus was ind...