Marine Lectins: Structure, Function, and Potential Applications

Dear colleagues,

There are increasing, numerous reports proving that glycans of conjugated or free forms serve an important function as informative elements in living system. Lectins, or glycan-recognition molecules, are ubiquitous proteins which play important biological roles by decoding glycan codes. Thus, lectins behave in a complementary style with glycans at critically important events of our life, such as development, immunity, and disease, including cancer, Alzheimer, and others. In this context, the potential of lectins as functional and useful materials has recently received much attention in the clinical and medical fields.

Marine organisms have recently been investigated for lectins, showing that many of the marine lectins reported to date have properties which are distinct from those of terrestrial organism origin. Thus, marine organisms are fascinating targets in “lectinology” covering evolution, function, and applications of lectins. However, we need much further information on marine lectins to comprehensively understand this lectin category. This Special Issue “Marine Lectins; Structure, Function and Potential Applications” aims at exploiting and understanding lectins from marine organisms, including bacteria, plants, and animals.

We very much look forward to your contributions to develop a comprehensive understanding of marine lectins.

Prof. Dr. Kanji Hori
Guest Editor

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• marine lectins
• structure
• function
• biological activity
• application
• evolution