IgA-affinity purification and characterization of the lectin jacalin.

We describe the use of IgA-Sepharose 4B affinity chromatography to purify the lectin jacalin from saline extracts of Artocarpus integrifolia L. seeds. Elution with 0.8 M D-galactose provides 10-15 mg lectin/50 mg seed protein. Jacalin behaved like a single component on immunoelectrophoresis and a single, somewhat diffuse band was obtained by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) at pH 4.5. A single peak corresponding to an apparent molecular weight of 43 kDa was obtained by gel filtration on Sephadex G-75 (10 mM phosphate buffered saline (PBS), pH 7.4). On SDS-PAGE +/- 2-mercaptoethanol two bands of apparent molecular weights 11.8 and 14.7 kDa were detected. Jacalin behaved like a protein of apparent molecular weight of 13-14 kDa on Sephadex G-50 eluted with PBS containing 0.2% SDS. These data indicate that the jacalin molecule consists of 3-4 non-identical polypeptide subunits not connected by disulfide bridges. The amino acid composition of IgA affinity-purified jacalin (mol/405 mol amino acids) is Lys (24), His (5), Arg (4), Trp (6), Asx (36), Thr (35), Ser (48), Glx (31), Pro (18), Gly (53), Ala (13), Val (25), Met (3), Ile (23), Leu (25), Tyr (30), Phe (26), which corresponds to a molecular weight of 44.163 kDa.