Isolation and characterization of peanut (Arachis hypogaea) lectin and study of its anti-cancer properties

Abstract

Plant lectins are sugar binding proteins or glycoproteins of non-immune origin having the ability to agglutinate or precipitate glycoconjugates or both. In the present work, the isolation and characterization of the lectin from the legume plant peanut (Arachis hypogaea) has been done. The isolation of the lactose-binding lectin from the peanut seeds was carried out by performing affinity chromatography using a lactamyl sepharose column. Affinity chromatography elute was dialysed, followed by lyophilization and the isolated lectin was characterized by both SDS, native PAGE followed by haemagglutination assay with untreated and neuraminidase-treated human erythrocytes. Besides, the in vitro anti-cancer property of the isolated PNA was determined by performing cell viability assays viz. MTT assay and trypan blue exclusion assay using human cancer cell lines. Furthermore, the isolated lectin was found to induce DNA fragmentation by performing DNA laddering assay.DAPI staining was also done for determining its role in inducing DNA fragmentation in dose dependent manner.