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Comparative analysis of carbohydrate binding properties of Sambucus nigra lectins and ribosome-inactivating proteins

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Abstract

In the past three decades a lot of research has been done on the extended family of carbohydrate-binding proteins from Sambucus nigra, including several so-called type 2 RIPs as well as hololectins. Although all these proteins have been studied for their carbohydrate-binding properties using hapten inhibition assays, detailed carbohydrate specificity studies have only been performed for a few Sambucus proteins. In particular SNA-I, has been studied extensively. Because of its unique binding characteristics this lectin was developed as an important tool in glycoconjugate research to detect sialic acid containing glycoconjugates. At present much less information is available with respect to the detailed carbohydrate binding specificity of other S. nigra lectins and RIPs, and as a consequence their applications remain limited. In this paper we report a comparative analysis of several lectins from S. nigra using the glycan microarray technology. Ultimately a better understanding of the ligands for each lectin can contribute to new/more applications for these lectins in glycoconjugate research. Furthermore, the data from glycan microarray analyses combined with the previously obtained sequence information can help to explain how evolution within a single lectin family eventually yielded a set of carbohydrate-binding proteins with a very broad specificity range.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded primarily by the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO grants G.0022.08) and the Research Council of Ghent University (project BOF10/GOA/003). Chenjing Shang is recipient of China Scholarship Council and receives doctoral co-funding from the Special Research Council of Ghent University. The authors want to thank the Consortium for Functional Glycomics funded by the NIGMS GM62116 for the glycan array analysis. Special thanks to Willy J. Peumans for purification of the proteins and critical reading of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Lab of Biochemistry and Glycobiology, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Chenjing Shang & Els J. M. Van Damme

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Shang, C., Van Damme, E.J.M. Comparative analysis of carbohydrate binding properties of Sambucus nigra lectins and ribosome-inactivating proteins. Glycoconj J 31, 345–354 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10719-014-9527-9

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