Lycopersicon esculentum lectin: an effective and versatile endothelial marker of normal and tumoral blood vessels in the central nervous system

Abstract

The binding of Lycopersicon esculentum lectin (LEA) to the vascular endothelium was studied in the central nervous system of rat, mouse and guinea pig at different developmental ages, and in a gliosarcoma model. Our observations showed that LEA consistently stained the entire vascular tree in the spinal cord and in the brain of all animal species at all developmental ages investigated. In the tumor model, the staining of the vascular network was very reproducible, enabled an easy identification of vascular profiles and displayed a higher efficiency when compared to two other commonly used vascular marker (EHS laminin and PECAM-1). Moreover, our results showed that LEA staining was comparable in both vibratome and paraffin sections and could be easily combined with other markers in double labeling experiments. These observations indicate that LEA staining may represent an effective and versatile endothelial marker for the study of the vasculature of the central nervous system in different animal species and experimental conditions.

COX-2-Derived Prostaglandin E2 Produced by Pyramidal Neurons Contributes to Neurovascular Coupling in the Rodent Cerebral Cortex

“…6 D, F; Table 9). This confirms the regular spiking phenotype of pyramidal cells (McCormick et al, 1985;Cauli et al, 2000;Andjelic et al, 2009;Karagiannis et al, 2009). Consistently, the molecular analysis of pyramidal cells revealed expression of the vesicular glutamate transporter, vGluT1 (Fig.…”

Use of labeled tomato lectin for imaging vasculature structures

“…Several investigators have applied lectins to fixed tissue sections (Nag 1985;Jilani et al 2003;Mazzetti et al 2004;Baratta et al 2009) and have successfully labeled capillaries and other small vascular elements. Indeed, it was initially the positive results achieved on tissue sections ) that prompted our interest in the use of intravascular administration in the living animal.…”

“…While this binding provides a useful marker when applied to fixed tissue sections (Nag 1985;Mazzetti et al 2004;Baratta et al 2009), it also is compatible with intravascular delivery of the lectin, where intravascular administration allows direct exposure of the tomato lectin to the luminal endothelial surface. If lectin is applied following fixation (Simionescu et al 1982), affinity of binding may be reduced due to aldehyde-induced alterations of the glycoprotein-binding sites, leading to somewhat reduced labeling.…”

“…Interestingly, Debbage et al (1998) report that CNS labeling is not achieved from use of other lectins, suggesting that the tomato lectin may be particularly advantageous in studies of CNS vasculature (Mazzetti et al 2004).…”

Stochastic electrotransport selectively enhances the transport of highly electromobile molecules

“…To thoroughly evaluate the extent to which stochastic electrotransport can achieve uniform and complete staining, we chose probes whose targets are present throughout the entire brain: SYTO 16, a widely used organic nuclear dye; fluorophore-conjugated Lycopersicon esculentum (tomato) lectin, a carbohydrate-binding protein widely used as an effective blood vessel marker (39)(40)(41); and anti-histone H3 protein, an antibody against histone H3 protein that is present in all cell nuclei. Stochastic electrotransport of these probes simultaneously into a mouse brain resulted in uniform and complete staining of their targets throughout the whole brain within a day (Fig.…”