Lectins of beneficial microbes: system organisation, functioning and functional superfamily

Abstract

In this review our last results and proposals with respect to general aspects of lectin studies are summarised and compared. System presence, organisation and functioning of lectins are proposed, and accents on beneficial symbiotic microbial lectins studies are presented. The proposed general principles of lectin functioning allows for a comparison of lectins with other carbohydrate-recognition systems. A new structure-functional superfamily of symbiotic microbial lectins is proposed and its main properties are described. The proposed superfamily allows for extended searches of the biological activities of any microbial member. Prospects of lectins of beneficial symbiotic microorganisms are discussed.

Lectin Systems Imitating Probiotics: Potential and Prospects for Biotechnology and Medical Microbiology

“…As it can be seen from the Aforementioned data allow preliminary classifications of PBL [5,7,16]. Currently, PBL can be considered as: originally surface proteins of recognition, Ca 2+ (and other metal cation)-containing and binding proteins, relatively (random structure)-organized (decreasing of randomly ordered structure in complexes as refolding recognition process), preferentially originally mono-or bivalent (one CBS in polypeptide) low sensitive haemagglutinins (similar to pan-agglutinins), with capability to create complexes, oligomeres and aggregated particles, members of functional superfamilies.…”

“…PBL also discriminated artificial peptidoglycan, mannans and mucins. Due to PBL revealing as LS [16] when two or more PBL forms (major and minor ones) vary on specificity, similarity (identical part of mosaic of the same specificity) and differences (the whole mosaic as unique, ranging intensity of components with the same specificity, some components which simultaneously recognize two types of target GC) between recognizing potential of species and genus of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria can be established.…”

“…Predicted PBL activities based on similarities to symbiotic bacterial lectins [16], other lectins and probiotics:…”

“…Symbiotic microbial lectins are important regulators of relationships between microbes and eukaryotic macroorganisms [16]. However, among symbiotic lectins, PBL are the least studied recognition factors [8,16,18].…”

“…During assembling, lectin complexes: a) increase their multivalent and multifunctional recognition (more CBS: carbohydrate binding sites [CRD or epitopes in space], appearance of new types of CBS and new targets are reached), b) form a dynamic partially reversible net system of lectin associates revealing carbohydrate recognition (the relatively changeable vector of resulting recognition by such a system can be evaluated by ordering a panel of carbohydrate targets according to their affinity to lectins). As a result, any lectin molecule in biological surroundings can be theoretically represented as: a) a lectin system (LS) of complexes and ensembles, b) a cascade of the directed assembling reactions, and c) a cascade system [16]. For example, complexes or oligomers of lectins or lectin-GC may be able to reveal new or modified carbohydrate/GC specificity, for example, in locations between subunits [14].…”