Lectins, discovered more than 100 years ago and defined by their ability to selectively recognise specific carbohydrate structures, are ubiquitous in living organisms. Their precise functions are as yet under-explored and incompletely understood but they are clearly involved, through recognition of their binding partners, in a myriad of biological mechanisms involved in cell identity, adhesion, signalling and growth regulation in health and disease. Understanding the complex ‘sugar code’ represented by the ‘glycome’ is a major challenge and at the forefront of current biological research. Lectins have been widely employed in histochemical studies to map glycosylation in cells and tissues. Here, a brief history of the discovery of lectins and early developments in their use is presented along with a selection of some of the most interesting and significant discoveries to emerge from use of lectin histochemistry. Further, an evaluation of the next generation of lectin-based technologies is presented, including the potential for designing recombinant lectins with more precisely defined binding characteristics, linking lectin-based studies with other technologies to answer fundamental questions in glycobiology, and approaches to exploring the interactions of lectins with their binding partners in more detail.
Brooks, Susan Ann
Department of Biological and Medical Sciences
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2021-10-27
“Copyright © 2022. Users may view, print, copy, download and text and data-mine the content, for the purposes of non-commercial academic research, subject always to the full conditions of use. See: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/accepted-manuscript-terms.”