REVIEW ARTICLE
Insight into Erythrina Lectins: Properties, Structure and Proposed Physiological Significance
Makarim Elfadil M. Osman, Emadeldin Hassan E. Konozy*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 5
First Page: 57
Last Page: 71
Publisher Id: TOBCJ-5-57
DOI: 10.2174/1874847301705010057
Article History:
Received Date: 23/06/2017Revision Received Date: 19/10/2017
Acceptance Date: 22/10/2017
Electronic publication date: 14/11/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The genus Erythrina, collectively known as “coral tree”, are pantropical plants, comprising of more than 112 species. Since the early 1980s, seven of these have been found to possess hemagglutinating activity, although not yet characterized. However, around two dozen galactose-binding lectins have been isolated and fully characterized with respect to their sugar specificity, glycoconjugates agglutination, dependence of activity on metal ions, primary and secondary structures and stability. Three lectins have been fully sequenced and the crystal structures of the two proteins have been solved with and without the haptenic sugar. Lectins isolation and characterization from most of these species usually originated from the seeds, although the proteins from other vegetative tissues have also been reported. The main objective of this review is to summarize the physicochemical and biological properties of the reported purified Erythrina lectins to date. Structural comparisons, based on available lectins sequences, are also made to relate the intrinsic physical and chemical properties of these proteins. Particular attention is also given to the proposed biological significance of the lectins from the genus Erythrina.