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Review Papers | Biological Sciences | India | Volume 12 Issue 8, August 2023 | Rating: 4.9 / 10

Exploring the Molecular Diversity of Lectins: Leveraging Bioinformatics for Gene Characterization and Phylogenetic Insights

Nivedita Patil | Dr. Soma Chaki

Abstract: Lectins are sugar - binding protein molecules, highly specific for the carbohydrate groups on glycoproteins, glycolipids, or polysaccharides and present in bacteria, viruses, plants and animals. They exhibit a high degree of affinity towards sugar moieties (1). Lectins are known to be heterogenous in their occurrence among different species, organs, and tissues, in addition to having structural and functional diversity. Most plant lectins are present as secretory proteins and are deposited in the vacuoles of a cell. For many years now, to understand plant lectins' functional specificity, one of the best - studied assayswas to agglutinate erythrocytes. Cancer treatments, biomedical applications, drug discovery are few areas where plant lectins have been found useful abundantly and are being constantly exploited in other fields of research as well. However, one of the less explored applications of plant lectins is the understanding at the molecular level. Although much of the literature information is available on the physiochemical aspect of the lectin protein, the gene structure and protein motifs studies are yet to be understood. An answer to this is the use of bioinformatics in establishing the phylogenetic territory of plant lectins, which will help demonstrate the enhanced role of lectins in each organism and further help widen the research application. The present review involves an understanding of bioinformatics tools' use to characterize lectin genes and build an association among the known lectins of plant, animal, and bacterial origin.

Keywords: Plant lectins, Bioinformatics, Lectin Genes, Glyco - informatics

Edition: Volume 12 Issue 8, August 2023,

Pages: 1057 - 1061