Antibiofilm Activity of Lectins from Plants and Marine Invertebrates: A Comparative Study

The present study includes seven lectins from plants and marine invertebrates, which were purified at our laboratories over the last 12 years. This work focused mainly on the antibiofilm activity of such lectins though other antibacterial activities have also been studied. The studied lectins showed specificity to galactose and N-acetyl aminosugars. Some lectins possessed broader sugar-binding specificity whereas others were very specific in nature. In most cases, lectins could not affect the planktonic growth of P. aeruginosa or E. coli despite of inhibiting the formation of biofilm in varying degrees. Besides the antibiofilm activity, different levels of antimicrobial activities against various pathogenic bacteria of the said lectins were compared with other lectins having similar properties. Revealing the molecular basis of these activities will be supportive to find their possible role in combined therapy with antibiotics. Keywords: Lectins; Antibiofilm; Bacteriostatic; Bacterial agglutination; Marine invertebrates