PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF NATURAL LECTINS AS IMMUNOHEMATOLOGICAL REAGENTS

DANDEU LEONARDO; RAMIREZ, ROSANA; REPOLLO, RODOLFO ; OYHENART, JORGE

CABA

Congreso; Reunion Conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencias; 2017

SAIC,SAIB, SAI, SAA, SAB, SAB, SAFE, SAFIS, SAH, SAP

It is been suggested that, recognition between proteins and carbohydrates is of crucial importance in various biological processes, such as viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, in the typing of blood groups, cancer and growth and differentiation. Lectins are the model system of choice to study the molecular basis of these recognition events because they are easy to purify in large quantities, but also exhibit a wide variety of carbohydrate specificities. Because lectins offer broad perspectives as tools diagnosis and therapeutic use, the objective of this work was to investigate the agglutinating activity of seeds of seven different amaranth cultivars. For this, suspensions of red blood cells from adult donors were used (NaCl 1%). The agglutination activity was evaluated by means of classic immunohematological techniques. After the necessary time had elapsed, the degree of agglutination was observed with the naked eye, in different periods of time (5-30 min), the interpretation of the results was performed using the following indices by crosses: (-) non-agglutination, (+) weak agglutination, (++) medium agglutination, (+++) strong agglutination, (++++) full agglutination. In this study were studied seeds from Amaranth plants, grown in INTA-Anguil in the province of La Pampa, according to the norms of good practices. Extracts obtained in saline were used, according to known methods. The protein content of each extract was determined by the method of (Kit AA, Wiener lab.). In order to characterize the proteins present in the amaranth extracts, the protein gel electrophoresis technique was applied. All extracts analyzed showed protein activity, and the same protein profile. Tests showed that, Amaranthus extracts strongly agglutinated all blood samples from adult donors. The results indicate the need to expand the studies on the activity of the different extracts of the lectins, for their use as cheap hemoclasifiers reagents in the immunohematological laboratory.