Rhodostomin from
venom of Agkistrodon rhodostoma (also called Calloselasma rhodostoma) contains 68
amino acid residues including 6 pairs of
disulfide bonds and an
arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) sequence at positions 49-51. It has been known as one of the strongest antagonists to platelet aggregation among the family termed
disintegrin. In this review paper, in addition to introducing the characteristics of
disintegrin and its related molecules, the advantages of using
recombinant DNA technology to produce
rhodostomin are described. The recombinant
rhodostomin has been demonstrated to facilitate cell adhesion via interaction between the RGD motif of
rhodostomin and
integrins on the cell surface. This property allowed us to use the recombinant
rhodostomin as an extracellular matrix to study cell adhesion and to distinguish attachment efficiency between two
melanoma cell lines B16-F1 and B16-F10, the former is a low
metastasis cell while the latter is a high
metastasis cell. Furthermore, by using the recombinant
rhodostomin as a substrate, osteoprogenitor-like cells are able to be selected and enriched within 3 days from rat bone marrow which contains a heterogeneous cell population. Finally, we show that the recombinant
rhodostomin can be immobilized on beads and which serve as an affinity column to dissect
cell-surface protein(s) binding to the RGD motif of
rhodostomin.