Cloning and sequence analysis of the Maackia amurensis haemagglutinin cDNA

Maackia amurensis haemagglutinin (MAH) is a leguminous lectin which preferentially binds to a cluster of sialylated O-linked carbohydrate chains (Konami Y, Yamamoto K. Osawa T, Irimura T (1994) FEBS Lett 342:334-38). In the present study a 950 bp cDNA clone encoding MAH was isolated from a cDNA library constructed from germinated Maackia amurensis seeds. From the nucleotide sequence, MAH was predicted to consist of 285 amino acid residues containing a signal peptide of 29 amino acids. The results also confirmed our previous findings from the amino acid sequence analysis, which indicated that two highly conserved amino acid residues in all other well-known leguminous lectins were replaced in MAH. These residues were lysine-105 and aspartic acid-135. The corresponding amino acid residues in other leguminous lectins were glycine and asparagine, respectively. These differences were due to the presence of nucleotides AAA and GAT in place of AAT/C and GGA/T.