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Lectins and false positive binding

Posted by wwakarchuk on 17 Feb 2013 at 20:46 GMT

There is at least some evidence to show that certain lectins bind to non-glycoproteins when the proteins have unusual amino acid compositions. HEWL is recognized very well by ConA but has no glycans at all (http://www.iovs.org/conte...). I would agree with Mario that there is no hard evidence here to support real glycosylation on those WGA binding proteins, and that is could certainly be an artifact of some kind. The real test is first the inhibition of the binding by specific sugars and then MS data that is the definitive proof.

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