Wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) is one of the most widely used lectins in cell biology. The receptor sugar for WGA is N-acetylglucosamine, with preferential binding to dimers and trimers of this sugar. WGA can bind oligosaccharides containing terminal N-acetylglucosamine or chitobiose, structures which are common to many serum and membrane glycoproteins. Bacterial cell wall peptidoglycans, chitin, cartilage glycosaminoglycans, and glycolipids can also bind WGA. Native WGA has also been reported to interact with some glycoproteins via sialic acid residues (see succinylated WGA).

Application Notes

Electrophoretic Analysis: This product contains 3 iso-lectin bands in polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in 0.35 M beta-alanine/acetic acid pH 4.5 buffer solution. Gels employed are 7.5% acrylamide and 0.2% N,N'-methylenediacrylamide polymerized with ammonium persulphate. Agglutination: Among the cells that WGA will agglutinate are human red blood cells types A, B, AB, O and rabbit red blood cells

Key Applications

Immunoassays