Specificity and affinity studies in lectin/ carbohydrate interactions
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Lectins are ubiquitous carbohydrate-binding proteins, characterized by their specificity recognition towards complex oligosaccharides and their non-immune origin.Their ability to distinguish oligosaccharides is central to many biological processes involving cell communication. They also play a role in many diseases being involved in cancer development and metastasis, inflammation and host-pathogen recognition. If recently characterized bacterial lectins display higher affinity for their target with Kd for monosaccharides in the micromolar range,3 lectin-carbohydrate interactions are more often characterized by rather low affinity, which is generally compensated by the presence of several binding sites, resulting in avidity or velcro effect. The development of fast and effective methods for determining lectin affinity and specificity has been hampered by the technical problem of obtaining sufficient amount of pure and well characterized oligosaccharides. |
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