Purification and concentration of DNA using l-fucose-specific lectin

Abstract

Lectins are classified into a small number of specificity groups according to their binding affinity to carbohydrate polymers. Therefore, we speculated that l-fucose lectin can combine with 5-carboxy-deoxyribose (pentose) instead of l-fucose (hexose), because of the similarity of chemical structure.Based on this supposition, we successfully purified and concentrated DNA using l-fucose lectin, which can cause agglutination of DNA from hemolytic bloodstains. This result indicates that lectin treatment could be an additional method used for purification of extracted DNA or degraded blood samples. The binding of l-fucose-specific lectin to deoxyribose allows the specific collection of DNA from the sediment of lectin agglutination. Therefore we concluded that, for old samples with a cell membrane that has been destroyed, we may collect the isolated bare DNA more effectively by adding lectin.