Gabriel García Caballero

TL;DR: To delineate the factors that underlie the specificity of a galectin for its counterreceptor(s) in the cellular context and the details of structure–activity relationships by comparatively analyzing natural and rationally engineered proteins is the main challenge for ongoing research.

TL;DR: The functional pairing with physiological counterreceptors is involved in a wide range of cellular activities from cell adhesion, glycoconjugate trafficking to growth regulation and lets lectins act as sensors/effectors in host defense.

TL;DR: The detection of mammalian (tissue) lectins and the emerging evidence for intimate molecular recognition between this class of receptors and their (glycoconjugate) counterreceptors substantiate that understanding the rules of the sugar code is presently a major challenge.

TL;DR: The generation of a network of (GA)lectins by evolutionary diversification affords the opportunity for additive/synergistic or antagonistic interplay in situ, an emerging aspect of (ga)lectin functionality that warrants close scrutiny.

TL;DR: The highly ordered multilayered organization of the adult chicken retina is a suitable test model for examining zonal distribution of the members of a bioeffector family and the results underline the requirement for network analysis for these proteins that can functionally interact in additive or antagonistic modes.