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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Bovine lactoferrin has been shown to reduce the levels of glucose in both normal subjects and non-insulin dependent diabetic patients. The binding studies have shown that various sugar molecules interact with lactoferrin indicating the presence of a sugar-binding site in the protein. Structural studies have revealed that the sugar-binding site is located in the C-terminal half (C-lobe) of bilobal lactoferrin. Since the sugar-binding site was part of the C-lobe, it was better to carry out binding and structural studies using C-lobe rather than the full protein molecule. Therefore, C-lobe was prepared by limited proteolysis of lactoferrin with enzyme proteinase K. It was purified to homogeneity for further studies. The addition of C-lobe to human serum showed significant lowering of glucose levels. The binding studies using C-lobe with nine sugars, glucose, galactose, mannose, xylose, maltose, cellobiose, lactose, sucrose and dextrin gave values of binding constants in the range of 10(-4) to 10(-5)M. The structure determinations of the complexes of C-lobe with all the nine sugars showed that all of them interact with C-lobe through the same recognition site involving several hydrogen bonds and van der Waals interactions.

Specific interactions of C-terminal half (C-lobe) of lactoferrin protein with edible sugars: binding and structural studies with implications on diabetes.,Mir R, Kumar RP, Singh N, Vikram GP, Sinha M, Bhushan A, Kaur P, Srinivasan A, Sharma S, Singh TP Int J Biol Macromol. 2010 Jul 1;47(1):50-9. Epub 2010 Apr 4. PMID:20371371^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.