Structures, Functions and Applications of Marine Lectins

Dear Colleagues,

Lectins are ubiquitous proteins in almost all types of organisms, including viruses, bacteria, algae, fungi, plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates, and primarily function as biomolecules decoding glycans in body fluid and on cell surfaces. Thus, lectins play important roles in fundamental life process, as well as glycans of informative molecules, indicating the importance of the proteins in both basic and application research fields for biology and medicine. In fact, several lectins are now available as research and clinical tools. To date, lectin research has mainly been directed to terrestrial organisms since the first discovery of a legume lectin. However, marine organisms are also interesting targets for lectin research because of their taxonomic position and biological diversity. Marine organisms inhabit in the special environment of seawater, which implies the novelty of metabolic pathways and metabolites, including lectin molecules. Certainly, lectins with unique structures and biological properties have recently been found from marine organisms. However, marine organisms investigated for lectins are still limited in the numerous species and the interests on marine lectins have been increasing for basic and application research purpose. As the Guest Editor, I invite researchers to provide recent advances in the attractive field of marine lectins.

Prof. Dr. Kanji Hori
Guest Editor

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