Glycoconjugates receptor

Andersson, B., Dahmen, J., Freid, R., Leffler, H., Magnusson, G., Noori, G., and Svanborg-Evan, C. (1983). Identification of an active disaccharide unit of glycoconjugate receptor for pneumococci attaching to human pharyngeal epithelial cells. /. Exp. Med. 158,559-570. 

Giannasca, K. T., Giannasca, P. J., and Neutra, M. R. (1996). Adherence of Salmonella Typhimurium to Caco-2 cells Identification of a glycoconjugate receptor. Infect. Immun. 64,135-145. 

Keywords Adhesin, Carbohydrate binding, Glycoconjugate receptor, Helicobacter pylori, Microbial adhesion... 

Lectins, or proteins with specific binding sites for carbohydrates, can be used as targeting molecules to localize particular glycoconjugates such as glycoproteins or glycolipids on cell surfaces (Fig. 373). Labeled with gold particles, lectins are important probes for detection of cell surface components and intracellular receptors and in immunological or biochemical assay procedures (Bog-Hansen et al., 1978 Kimura et al., 1979 Nicolson, 1978 Roth, 1983 Benhamou et al., 1988 Nakajima et al., 1988). 

Owing to the weakness of carbohydrate receptor-protein interactions, in order to attain biological meaningful affinities for the receptor, carbohydrates very often need to be clustered and expressed in multiple copies. For this purpose glycodendrimers, which are multivalent glycoconjugates with well-defined chemical structures, have received recent attention for their considerable potential as tools for studying cell-surface protein-carbohydrate interactions, because of the affinity enhancement obtained by multivalency. 

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