Affinophoresis of pea lectin and fava bean lectin with an anionic affinophore, bearing rho-aminophenyl-alpha-D-mannoside as an affinity ligand.

Affinophoresis is an electrophoretic separation technique for biological polymers with the aid of an affinophore, which is a macromolecular polyelectrolyte bearing affinity ligands. The affinophore migrates rapidly in an electric field, and consequently the electrophoretic mobility of molecules having an affinity for the ligand is specifically changed. An anionic affinophore-bearing mannosyl residue was synthesized for the affinophoresis of lectins. rho-Aminophenyl-alpha-D-mannopyranoside and aminomethanesulphonic acid were coupled to about one-tenth and one-fifth, respectively, of the carboxyl groups of succinyl-poly-L-lysine with an average degree of polymerization of 120 by the use of a water-soluble carbodiimide. Extracts of seeds of pea (Pisum sativum) or fava bean (Vicia fava) were subjected to two-dimensional agarose gel electrophoresis, in which the first dimension was ordinary agarose gel electrophoresis and the second dimension was affinophoresis with the affinophore. The separated proteins were stained with Coomassie Blue R250. The lectins in both seed extracts were separated from a diagonal line formed by other proteins in the extracts. About 10 ng of the separated pea lectin was detected on a nitrocellulose blot by immunostaining with a horseradish peroxidase-conjugated second antibody.