NMR Investigation of Protein-Carbohydrate Interactions: The Recognition of Glycans by Galectins Engineered with Fluorotryptophan Residues

Fluorine (¹⁹F) incorporation into glycan-binding proteins (lectins) has been achieved and exploited to monitor the binding to carbohydrate ligands by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Galectins are a family of lectins that bind carbohydrates, generally with weak affinities, through a combination of intermolecular interactions including a key CH-π stacking involving a conserved tryptophan residue. Herein, Galectin-3 (Gal3) and Galectin-8 (Gal8) with one and two carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs), respectively, were selected. Gal3 contains one Trp, whereas Gal8 contains three, one at each binding site and a third one not involved in sugar binding; these were substituted by the corresponding F-Trp analogues. The presence of fluorine did not significantly modify the affinity for glycan binding, which was in slow exchange on the ¹⁹F NMR chemical-shift timescale, even for weak ligands, and allowed binding events taking place at two different binding sites within the same lectin to be individualized.