Volume 2 Issue 2, July 1992: 129-137
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
Effect of ConA-receptor interaction on the structure of cell membrane
Jianwu Dai1, Qun Dong1, Yaxian Su1 and Kechun Lin1,2
1Department of Cell Biology, Beijing Medical University, Beljing 100083, China
2Department of Biophysics, Beijing Medical University, Beljing 100083, China
Correspondence:
Recently, the effect of ligand receptor interaction on the membrane structure of liposomes has been studied extensively. However, little is known about how it exists on biological membranes. In this paper, the effect of Concanavalin A (ConA) receptor interaction on the structure of cell membranes was studied by Circular Dichroism (CD) and 31P Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).
CD results of both the purified macrophage membranes and human erythrocyte ghosts (EG) showed that the conformation of membrane proteins changed after ConA binding.
For further research, 31P-NMR was used to detect the organization of phospholipid molecules on macrophage membranes. After ConA binding, the tendency to form non bilayer structure increased with the amount of ConA. The changes of 31P-NMR spectra of living macrophages might be partly due to the above stated reason too.
In addition, ConA-receptor interaction also induced similar results of 31P-NMR spectra in EG. In contrast, wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), another kind of lectin, rarely showed the same influence.
Cell Res 2: 129-137; doi:10.1038/cr.1992.13
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