Gabius H J, Unverzagt C, Kayser K
Institute for Physiological Chemistry, Veterinary Faculty, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, München, Germany.
Biotech Histochem. 1998 Sep;73(5):263-77. doi: 10.3109/10520299809141120.
Oligosaccharides can store biological information. In this respect, their capacity even outmatches that of oligo- and polymeric structures of nucleotides and amino acids. Protein-carbohydrate interactions are thus considered to be involved in the regulation of diverse cellular activities. Over decades, plant lectins have proven valuable for assessing structural aspects of the enormous variety of carbohydrate epitopes and for monitoring spatially and/or temporally restricted patterns of expression. If the presence of these epitopes and the alterations in their occurrence bear physiological relevance, one reasonable possibility is that the visualized saccharides serve as ligands in an operative protein-carbohydrate recognition system. To support the validity of this hypothesis, receptor sites for a sugar compound must be localized. Carrier-immobilized carbohydrates (neoglycoconjugates) are adequate for this purpose. Chemical synthesis gains access to such probes. In the first stage, the presence of binding sites such as lectins in the tissue is ascertained. The next step toward proving the outlined hypothesis is the application of the first localized then purified endogenous receptors as glycohistochemical markers. It is essential to point out that the fine specificities of plant and animal lectins can differ, although they share an identical monosaccharide specificity. Thus, neoglycoconjugates for localizing sugar ligand-binding proteins and endogenous lectins to detect suitable binding partners are promising probes to enhance our knowledge about the capacities of cells to be engaged in protein-carbohydrate recognition in situ.
寡糖可以存储生物信息。在这方面，它们的能力甚至超过了核苷酸和氨基酸的寡聚及聚合结构。因此，蛋白质 - 碳水化合物相互作用被认为参与了多种细胞活动的调节。几十年来，植物凝集素已被证明在评估种类繁多的碳水化合物表位的结构方面以及监测空间和/或时间上受限的表达模式方面具有重要价值。如果这些表位的存在及其出现的变化具有生理相关性，那么一种合理的可能性是，可视化的糖类在一个有效的蛋白质 - 碳水化合物识别系统中作为配体发挥作用。为了支持这一假设的有效性，必须定位糖化合物的受体位点。载体固定化碳水化合物（新糖缀合物）适用于此目的。化学合成可以获得此类探针。在第一阶段，要确定组织中是否存在诸如凝集素之类的结合位点。证明上述假设的下一步是应用首先定位然后纯化的内源性受体作为糖组织化学标记物。必须指出的是，植物和动物凝集素的精细特异性可能不同，尽管它们具有相同的单糖特异性。因此，用于定位糖配体结合蛋白的新糖缀合物以及用于检测合适结合伙伴的内源性凝集素是很有前景的探针，有助于我们增进对细胞在原位参与蛋白质 - 碳水化合物识别能力的了解。
