Biomolecular Self-assembling Systems for Multivalent Ligand Display

Abstract

A. IntroductionGlycolipids present on the cell surfaces can form assemblies called raft structures, which are recognized by saccharide-binding proteins, such as lectins and complementary glycolipids (via carbohydrate-carbohydrate interaction). Although the interaction between lectin and individual oligosaccharides is generally weak, the assemblies of glycolipids are recognized by lectin with relatively high affinity constant. This is called multivalency or glycocluster effect (1-4), which is also observed in antigen-antibody, RGDintegrin, transcription factor-DNA, and carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions.To date, various artificial materials mimicking multivalent glycoclusters, such as glycoconjugate synthetic polymers (2, 5), dendrimers (5-7), gold nanoparticles (8), and metal complexes (9), were developed, which bound to saccharide-binding proteins with relatively high affinity constant. These are useful not only as models for molecular recognition of glycolipids or glycoproteins but also as cell-culture substrates, materials for trapping viruses and

Middle-molecular-weight Glycoclusters for the Crosslinking of Multivalent Lectins

“…This process is called the glycocluster effect. In recent years, various artificial multivalent glyco-materials (e.g., glyco-polymers, glyco-particles, and glyco-thin films) have been developed and widely used as a tool for elucidating the lectincarbohydrate interaction (14,(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Furthermore, because these multivalent glyco-materials also have the property of strongly binding to, for example, viruses, microorganisms, and toxin proteins that possess lectins, they are also used as adsorbents or detection probes for these factors (24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31).…”