FIGURE 2 | Intracellular and extracellular functions of galectins.

Galectins (shown here as Gal-1–Gal-12) can be intracellularly located or secreted into the extracellular space. Extracellularly, they can crosslink cell-surface glycoconjugates that are decorated by suitable galactose-containing oligosaccharides and can deliver signals inside the cell. Through this mechanism, they modulate mitosis, apoptosis and cell-cycle progression. Intracellularly, galectins shuttle between the nucleus and cytoplasm and are engaged in fundamental processes such as pre-mRNA splicing. They can also regulate cell growth, cell-cycle progression and apoptosis by interacting with the relevant intracellular signal-regulation pathways. Although the galactosyl ligands recognized by galectins have been drawn to be the same in this figure, galectins have high specificity for oligosaccharides, and each can bind to a different set of glycoconjugates. Also, although we have not explicitly shown them here, galectins can bind to both glycolipids and glycoproteins.

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