A group from Graduate School of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University, Hakodate, Japan, etc. has reported about interactions between thrombopoietin (TPO) receptor MPL and a marine sponge-derived lectin, thrombocorticin (ThC).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34921-2
It has been reported that a marine sponge-derived 14-kDa protein, ThC, as a potent agonist of MPL.
In this study, the three-dimensional structure of ThC was elucidated as a fucose-binding lectin, and also it was shown that the MPL activation was induced by its binding to a fucosylated glycan on MPL.
Dimer structure of rThC in complex with Ca2+ (green ball) and fucose (ball-and-stick model, yellow: carbon, red: oxygen)
