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Brief report: a new profile of terminal N-acetyllactosamines glycans on pig red blood cells and different expression of α-galactose on Sika deer red blood cells and nucleated cells

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Abstract

It has been reported that: (1) large variations were found in the number of sialic acid (SA) capped with N-acetyllactosamines (SA-Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R) and α-Gal epitopes (Galα1-3Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R) or uncapped N-acetyllactosamines (Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R) on different mammalian red blood cells, and on nucleated cells originating from a given tissue in various species; (2) goat, sheep, horse and mouse red blood cells lack α-Gal epitopes, despite the expression of this epitope on a variety of nucleated cells in these species, including lymphocytes differentiated from the same hematopoietic origin. In this study, flow cytometry and Western blot analyses of pig red blood cells showed that α-Gal epitopes on pig red cells developed concomitantly after treatment with neuraminidase, suggesting that the terminal N-acetyllactosaminide glycans were capped with SA-α-Gal epitopes. Whereas, the expression of the α-Gal epitopes on red blood cells from Sika deer (Cevus nippon hortulorum) were found to be absent even though the epitopes were present on their white blood cells. Thus, these results add new data not only for the terminal carbohydrate structures on cell surface glycans of various mammalian cells, but also for wide variety of epitope expression on the cells from different tissues, which might be useful for understanding their unique states resulting from differentiation and evolution.

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Abbreviations

α-Gal:

Galα1-3Galβ1-4GlcNAc

FACS:

Fluorescent activated cell sorting

FCM:

Flow cytometry

FITC:

Fluorescein isothiocyanate

GlcNAc:

N-acetylglucosamine

GS-IB4:

Griffonia simplicifolia isolectin B4

hRBC-A and hRBC-O:

Group A and O of human red blood cell

M86:

Mouse monoclonal antibody to α-gal epitopes

NeuGc:

N-glycolylneuraminic acid

N-acetyllactosamine:

Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R

PBS:

Phosphate buffered saline

PK15:

Pig kidney cell line

PVDF:

Polyvinyidene fluoride

SA:

Sialic acid

TBST:

Tris-buffered saline, 0.1% Tween 20

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Specific-Pathogen-Free Pig Breeding Center of Beijing for providing pig blood samples. We thank Bo Dong for the flow cytometric analysis. This study was supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program of China (NBRPC, no.2002CB713804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Blood Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Beijing Institute of Transfusion Medicine, 27# Taiping Road, Beijing, 100850, China

    Yingxia Tan, Feng Gong, Subo Li, Shouping Ji, Hongwei Gao & Yangpei Zhang

  2. Beijing Zoo, Beijing, China

    Yanping Lu

  3. Blood Center of Shaanxi Province, Xi’an, China

    Hua Xu

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  1. Yingxia Tan
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  2. Feng Gong
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  3. Subo Li
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  4. Shouping Ji
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  5. Yanping Lu
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  7. Hua Xu
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  8. Yangpei Zhang
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Correspondence to Feng Gong or Yangpei Zhang.

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Tan, Y., Gong, F., Li, S. et al. Brief report: a new profile of terminal N-acetyllactosamines glycans on pig red blood cells and different expression of α-galactose on Sika deer red blood cells and nucleated cells. Glycoconj J 27, 427–433 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10719-010-9289-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10719-010-9289-y

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