Extraction, Characterization, and Properties of Plant Polysaccharides

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomacromolecules, Biobased and Biodegradable Polymers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2022) | Viewed by 3605

Special Issue Editor

National Forestry and Grassland Southwest Engineering Technology Research Centre of Taxus, Sichuan Agricultural University, Dujiangyan, China
Interests: polysaccharides; carbohydrate polymers; glycoproteins
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Polysaccharides are not only important structural components of biological organisms, but also an important receptor of signal or information molecules. They participate in molecular recognition, cell adhesion and cell defense mechanisms. Polysaccharides from many plants have the anti-tumor, immune regulation, anti-oxidation, anti-virus, hypoglycemic, anticoagulant functions, to name a few. Moreover, due to the non-toxic, biocompatible and biodegradable characteristics of some plant polysaccharides, they have attracted extensive attention as new functional biomaterials and are widely used in the fields of pharmacy, biomedicine and cosmetics. The chemical structure and conformation of polysaccharide chains play an important role in their biological activity; small changes in molecular structure will affect their activity. In order to isolate natural bioactive polysaccharides from various plants and analyze their structural characteristics and bioactivity, it is helpful to understand the biological mechanisms and structure–activity relationship of polysaccharides.

Dr. Aoxue Luo
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • plant polysaccharides
  • extraction process
  • biological activities
  • physicochemical properties
  • structure–activity relationship

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 1049 KiB  
Article
Extraction and Characterization of Cocoa Bean Shell Cell Wall Polysaccharides
by Amalie Younes, Salwa Karboune, Lan Liu, Eugenio Spadoni Andreani and Sarah Dahman
Polymers 2023, 15(3), 745; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15030745 - 1 Feb 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3175
Abstract
Cocoa bean shells (CBS), a by-product of the cocoa industry, from two cacao varieties and obtained after selected processing conditions (fermentation, drying, roasting) were characterized in terms of their chemical composition, where they were found to be a great source of carbohydrates, specifically [...] Read more.
Cocoa bean shells (CBS), a by-product of the cocoa industry, from two cacao varieties and obtained after selected processing conditions (fermentation, drying, roasting) were characterized in terms of their chemical composition, where they were found to be a great source of carbohydrates, specifically dietary fiber, protein, ash, and polyphenols, namely quercetin, epicatechin, and catechin. Cell wall polysaccharides were isolated by alkaline extraction (0.5 M or 4 M KOH) and were found to be enriched primarily in pectic polysaccharides (80.6–86%) namely rhamnogalacturonan and arabinogalactan as well as hemi- cellulosic polysaccharides (13.9–19.4%). Overall, 0.5 M KOH polysaccharides were favored having provided a diverse profile of neutral sugars and uronic acids. When tested for the promotion of the growth of selected probiotic strains, CBS cell wall polysaccharides performed similarly or more than inulin and rhamnogalacturonan based on the prebiotic activity scores. The short-chain fatty acid profiles were characterized by high amounts of lactic acid, followed by acetic and propionic acid. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Extraction, Characterization, and Properties of Plant Polysaccharides)
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