CYTOTOXICITY AND IN-VITRO ANTIVIRAL ACTIVITY OF LECTIN FROM CROCUS VERNUS L. AGAINST POTATO VIRUS Y

Plant lectins are the potential proteins that specifically bound and cross linked with carbohydrates and target particular glycans present on the cell surface of viruses through a pathway termed as a lectin activation pathway. They have a role in plant defense system. In this study, we evaluated anti-PVY (potato virus Y) activity of plant derived lectin in in-vitro assay. A tetramer lectin was isolated from the corms of Crocus vernus and purified to sub fractions through ammonium sulfate precipitation, dialysis, filtration on the PD 10 column, cation exchange chromatography on SP-Sepharose gel. In-silico studies predicted stable interaction between Crocus vernus lectin (CVL) and targeted protein of PVY. Cytotoxicity tests performed on HepG2 cells indicated IC50 value for CVL was 770 mu g/ml. The IC50 values indicated the safe limit and non-cytotoxic effect of the CVL extract and worth for further testing. The hemagglutination activity of CVL against the rabbit erythrocytes was revealed to be 100 mu g/ml. The anti-PVY activity displayed in the CVL lectin was evaluated through quantitative real-time PCR assay. It was revealed that CVL was effective against targeted gene of PVY at 30, 60 and 90 mu g/ml concentration and up to 100% inhibition of the PVY mRNA was achieved in all three tested concentrations in comparison with control. Our results clearly indicate the CVL gene can be a used for transformation studies in potato to control the potato virus Y as an effective tool, in the future.