An overview of lectins from freshwater and marine macroinvertebrates

Lectins are one of several types of biological resources considered as potential medicinal importance for therapeutic agents. The present review deals with variety, sugar specificity and the medicinal importance of lectins from freshwater and marine invertebrates. The potent medicinal usage of the various types of the lectins from freshwater and marine non-chordates, which are comparatively well studied and compiled. Various literatures survey revealed that the lectin isolated in recent past from the freshwater species majorly from mollusca and arthropods (crustacean) etc. and also from marine sources of phylum porifera, cnidaria, annelida, arthropoda, mollusca and echinodermata could be rich sources of medicinal properties having remedial measures to bacterial infection, inflammatory disorders, cancer, mitogenic effect and antigen defence. The present study will be a database development to support global drug discovery researches on several types of lectins from freshwater and marine organisms for academicians, researchers and medicine manufacturers having therapeutic approaches for mankind by natural ingredients.