Preliminary Characterization of Crude Lectin Fraction of the Red Alga,Acrocystis nanafrom Wediombo Beach of the Southern Coast of Java Island, Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Lectins from red algae and their biomedical potential

“…Purified recombinant B. triquetrum lectin (rBTL) agglutinates only papain and trypsin-treated rabbit erythrocytes indicating that its ligands are not directly accessible at the cell surface (Nascimento et al 2015). Crude lectin from A. nana exhibits a high haemagglutination titre with trypsin-treated rabbit erythrocytes (Anam et al 2017a). Further, carbohydrate specificity of these lectins is the underlying cause for their varied agglutination preferences towards different erythrocytes.…”

“…Eucheuma serra isolectins also exhibit lectin activity over broad pH range of 2.5-10.5 (Kawakubo et al 1997). Lectins from few red algae species such as P. serrata (Sampaio et al 1999), Gracilaria bursa-pastoris (Hori et al 1986a), T. crinitus (Molchanova et al 2010) and A. nana (Anam et al 2017a) exhibit activity near neutral pH range (6-8) with loss of activity beyond/above this range.…”

“…Haemagglutination activity of lectins from P. capillacea (Oliveira et al 2002), G. ornata (Leite et al 2005), K. alvarezii (Le et al 2009) and crude protein extract from G. fisheri (Boonsri et al 2017) is stable till 50°C temperature. Lectins from C. flabellata (Hori et al 1986a) and A. nana (Anam et al 2017a) are stable only up to 30°C temperature. Haemagglutinins from several red algae species such as A. tenera, C. purpureum, C. flabellata and V. obtusiloba are thermosensitive with total or almost total activity loss when heated to temperatures equal to or above 60°C (Shiomi et al 1979;Kamiya et al 1980;Hori et al 1987;Melo et al 2004).…”

“…Red algae lectins usually do not require divalent cations for maintenance of their haemagglutination activity; however, a few lectins isolated from the red algae such as Plumaria elegans, P. serrata (Rogers et al 1990), P. filicina ), E. duperreyi (Benevides et al 1998), and V. obtusiloba (Melo et al 2004) are dependent on metals, like Ca 2+ , Mn 2+ and Mg 2+ . Crude lectin extract from A. nana requires divalent cations Ca 2+ and Mn 2+ for its haemagglutination activity (Anam et al 2017a). Thus, metal requirement is not a general characteristic of red algae lectins; however, a few lectins are metalloproteins.…”

“…Owing to high expression level, potency, stability and current indication for topical delivery, GRFT acts as best-case scenario for non-vaccine plant made pharmaceuticals; however, there are many challenges associated with its bulk production (Fuqua et al 2015). Lectins from various other red marine algae such as Eucheuma serra (Fukuda et al 2006), Bryothamnion seaforthii and Bryothamnion triquetrum (Pinto et al 2009), Acrocystis nana (Anam et al 2017a(Anam et al , 2017b and Solieria filiformis (Chaves et al 2017) have anti-cancer potential and also used as drug delivery agents owing to their carbohydrate specificity. Thus, studies conducted on various algal lectins bring in a new element of research in biomedical applications.…”