Through their ability to bind complex glycoconjugates, lectins have unique specificity and potential for biomedical and biotechnological applications. In particular, lectins with short repeated peptides forming carbohydrate-binding domains are not only of high interest for understanding protein evolution but can also be used as scaffold for engineering novel receptors. Synthetic glycobiology now provides the tools for engineering the specificity of lectins as well as their structure, multivalency and topologies. This review focuses on the structure and diversity of two families of tandem-repeat lectins, that is, β-trefoils and β-propellers, demonstrated as the most promising scaffold for engineering novel lectins.

中文翻译：

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串联重复凝集素的结构和工程。

凝集素通过其结合复杂糖缀合物的能力，具有独特的特异性和潜力，可用于生物医学和生物技术应用。特别地，具有形成碳水化合物结合结构域的短重复肽的凝集素不仅对于理解蛋白质进化具有很高的兴趣，而且还可用作工程新受体的支架。现在，合成糖生物学为工程设计凝集素的特异性及其结构，多价和拓扑结构提供了工具。这篇综述着眼于两个串联重复凝集素家族的结构和多样性，即β-三叶草和β-螺旋桨，被证明是工程化新型凝集素最有希望的支架。