The carbohydrate binding specificities of three sialoadhesins, a subgroup of I-type lectins (immunoglobulin superfamily lectins), were compared by measuring lectin-transfected COS cell adhesion to natural and synthetic gangliosides. The neural sialoadhesins, myelinassociated glycoprotein (MAG) and Schwann cell myelin protein (SMP), had similar and stringent binding specificities. Each required an ␣2,3-linked sialic acid on the terminal galactose of a neutral saccharide core, and they shared the following rank-order potency of binding: G Q1b␣ > > G D1a ؍ G T1b > > G M3 ؍ G M4 > > G M1 , G D1b , G D3 , G Q1b (nonbinders). In contrast, sialoadhesin had less exacting specificity, binding to gangliosides that bear either terminal ␣2,3-or ␣2,8-linked sialic acids with the following rank-order potency of binding: Sialoadhesins (1) are a structurally and functionally related family consisting of five immunoglobulin superfamily lectins (I-type lectins) (2) including myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG), 1 Schwann cell myelin protein (SMP), CD22, CD33, and sialoadhesin. MAG and SMP are found on oligodendroglia and Schwann cells in the nervous system (3, 4), CD22 is expressed on a subset of B lymphocytes, sialoadhesin on a subset of macrophages, and CD33 on cells of myelomonocytic lineage. Sialoadhesins have been proposed to mediate cell-cell recognition, perhaps via their carbohydrate binding activities (5-7). Each sialoadhesin family member has two or more Ig-like domains: an amino-terminal V-set domain followed by one or more (up to 16) C2-set domains (8). Domain deletion and sitedirected mutagenesis of sialoadhesin and CD22 localize their carbohydrate-binding sites to the amino-terminal V-set domain, with contributions (for CD22) from the adjoining C2-set domain. These first two domains share very high amino acid sequence similarity between MAG and SMP (Ͼ70%) and significant similarity across all I-type lectins (Ͼ30% in pairwise comparisons) (2,8,9).Each I-type lectin binds to carbohydrate structures bearing a nonreducing terminal sialic acid (1,6,10). Sialic acids are a common nonreducing terminus of vertebrate glycoconjugates and appear to play uniquely important roles in recognition phenomena. Because sialic acids may be linked to Gal, GalNAc, or other sialic acid residues at various positions and because they may carry different substituents on their 9-carbon base structure, the sialic acids represent a diverse family of carbohydrate determinants (11). In certain sialic acid-dependent recognition systems, determinant stringency is low. For example, selectins bind to oligosaccharides bearing truncated sialic acids (12) or appropriately placed anionic groups (sulfates, carboxylic acids) otherwise unrelated to the sialic acid structure (13-16). In contrast, sialoadhesins appear to have more stringent sialic acid specificities (see "Discussion") (9). In this study, we used cells expressing different sialoadhesins to explore and compare the fine structural preferences of their binding to target sialylated glycoconju...