Structural features of the legume lectins

The legume lectins are a family of carbohydrate binding proteins found in the Leguminosae plants and are used as a model system for studying protein-carbohydrate interactions. The different legume lectins show a remarkable range of sugar specificities, despite the high sequential and structural similarity of their subunits. Moreover, their subunits can associate into a number of different multimers. The unique variability of quaternary structure has implications for the formation of cross-linked lattices and binding of hydrophobic ligands.