Preparation and Application of Lectin-Gold Complexes

The results obtained with various plant and animal tissues as well as pathogenic cells demonstrate that lectin-gold complexes enable localization of sugar residues at the ultra structural level. Provided that sugar residues are not altered during processing, the lectin- gold method represents undoubtedly a simple and powerful approach for localizing glyco-conjugates. Because of the electron dense gold marker, the labeling obtained is always of high resolution and a good correlation of markers and the cellular compartments can be easily and repeatedly established. In our studies, incubation of thin sections of the human conjunctival goblet cells having N. acetyl D-Galactoseamine rich mucus droplets with the HPA-GC revealed numerous gold particles in the electron micrographs.