Cyclodextrin, a probe for studying adhesive interactions.
In this short communication, we introduce alpha-cyclodextrin as a new probe to study mechanisms of adhesive interactions. We show that this cyclic polysaccharide, that consisting of six glucosyl residues linked by alpha-1,4 bonds, was the only sugar of 22 tested that dramatically blocked a specific cellular interaction in the sea urchin embryo (p<0.001 compared with non-sugar controls). A total of 150-400 embryos were sampled for each concentration of each sugar tested. Mechanisms of cellular interactions have been studied for almost a century and they still remain poorly understood. Cyclodextrin is an exciting new tool that can be utilized for investigating these mechanisms.
Sajadi
Sahar
S
Department of Biology and Center for Cancer Developmental Biology, California State University Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8303, USA.
Rojas
Patricia
P
Oppenheimer
Steven B
SB
D000818:Animals; D002448:Cell Adhesion / Q000187:drug effects; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects; D047331:Lytechinus / Q000166:cytology* / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000196:embryology; D012623:Seawater; D047391:alpha-Cyclodextrins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology*
D047391:alpha-Cyclodextrins; C032613:alpha-cyclodextrin