Principles of structures of animal and plant lectins.

Lectins form a diverse group of protein families that have in common their ability to specifically recognize certain carbohydrates. Crystal structures of members of the different animal and plant lectin families have revealed a wide variety of lectin folds and carbohydrate binding site architectures. Despite this large variability, a number of interesting cases of convergent as well as divergent evolution among animal and plant lectin families can be noted. These similarities exist at the levels of the protein fold, the architecture of the binding site as well as quaternary structure and may be derived from similar functional needs.