Capillary-based lectin affinity electrophoresis for interaction analysis between lectins and glycans

Capillary affinity electrophoresis (CAE) is a powerful technique for glycan analysis, and one of the analytical approaches for analyzing the interaction between lectins and glycans. The method is based on the high-resolution separation of fluorescently labeled glycans by capillary electrophoresis (CE) with laser-induced fluorescence detection (LIF) in the presence of lectins (or glycan binding proteins). CAE allows simultaneous determination of glycan structures in a complex mixture of glycans. In addition, we can calculate the binding kinetics on a specific glycan in the complex mixture of glycans with a lectin. Here, we show detailed procedures for capillary affinity electrophoresis of fluorescently labeled glycans with lectins using CE-LIF apparatus. Its application to screening a sialic acid binding protein in plant barks is also shown.