In recent decades, the polysaccharides from the medicinal plants have attracted a lot of attention due to their significant bioactivities, such as anti-tumor activity, antioxidant activity, anticoagulant activity, antidiabetic activity, radioprotection effect, anti-viral activity, hypolipidemic and immunomodulatory activities, which make them suitable for medicinal applications. Previous studies have also shown that medicinal plant polysaccharides are non-toxic and show no side effects. Based on these encouraging observations, most researches have been focusing on the isolation and identification of polysaccharides, as well as their bioactivities. A large number of bioactive polysaccharides with different structural features and biological effects from medicinal plants have been purified and characterized. This review provides a comprehensive summary of the most recent developments in physiochemical, structural features and biological activities of bioactive polysaccharides from a number of important medicinal plants, such as polysaccharides from Astragalus membranaceus, Dendrobium plants, Bupleurum, Cactus fruits, Acanthopanax senticosus, Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels, Aloe barbadensis Miller, and Dimocarpus longan Lour. Moreover, the paper has also been focused on the applications of bioactive polysaccharides for medicinal applications. Recent studies have provided evidence that polysaccharides from medicinal plants can play a vital role in bioactivities. The contents and data will serve as a useful reference material for further investigation, production, and application of these polysaccharides in functional foods and therapeutic agents.
In this study, the structural characterization and bile acid-binding capacity of Laminaria japonica polysaccharides (LP), obtained by seven different extraction methods, were investigated. The results indicated that extraction methods exhibited significant effects on extraction yield, molecular weight, monosaccharide composition and the content of neutral sugar, fucose, uronic acid and sulfate of LP. AFM analysis indicated that LP extracted by different methods exhibited certain different, flexible and worm-like chains with many branches. Rheological measurements showed that the LP, obtained by pressurized hot water extraction and acid assisted extraction, exhibited lower viscosity due to their lower molecular weight, compared to other extracted polysaccharides. The bile acid-binding capacity of acid assisted extracted LP was significantly higher than other LP samples tested, which was probably ascribed to its highly branched structure, low molecular weight, low viscosity and abundant uronic acid and fucose in total monosaccharides. The present study provides scientific evidence and advances in the preparation technology and a method for evaluating hypolipidemic activities of L. japonica polysaccharides.
The past two decades have witnessed a global surge in the application of probiotics as functional ingredients in food, animal feed, and pharmaceutical products. Among food industries, the dairy industry is the largest sector where probiotics are employed in a number of dairy products including sour/fermented milk, yogurt, cheese, butter/cream, ice cream, and infant formula. These probiotics are either used as starter culture alone or in combination with traditional starters, or incorporated into dairy products following fermentation, where their presence imparts many functional characteristics to the product (for instance, improved aroma, taste, and textural characteristics), in addition to conferring many health‐promoting properties. However, there are still many challenges related to the stability and functionality of probiotics in dairy products. This review highlights the advances, opportunities, and challenges of application of probiotics in dairy industries. Benefits imparted by probiotics to dairy products including their role in physicochemical characteristics and nutritional properties (clinical and functional perspective) are also discussed. We transcend the traditional concept of the application of probiotics in dairy products and discuss paraprobiotics and postbiotics as a newly emerged concept in the field of probiotics in a particular relation to the dairy industry. Some potential applications of paraprobiotics and postbiotics in dairy products as functional ingredients for the development of functional dairy products with health‐promoting properties are briefly elucidated.
Our previous study has suggested that the crude polysaccharide obtained from Laminaria japonica by acid assisted extraction (LP-A) have significant bile acid-binding capacity, which probably ascribed to its specific structure characterization. The relationship between structure characterization and bile acid-binding capacity of the purified LP-A fractions are still unknown. This paper conducted a comparison study on the structure characterization and bile acid-binding capacity of three LP-A fractions (LP-A4, LP-A6, and LP-A8). The results indicated that LP-A4, LP-A6, and LP-A8, characterized as mannoglucan, fucomannoglucan, and fucogalactan, had significantly different structure characterization. Furthermore, the bile acid-binding capacity of LP-A8 was obviously higher than the other fractions, which may be attributed to its highly branched structure, abundant sulfate, fucose, and galactose in chemical composition and denser interconnected macromolecule network in molecular morphology. This study provides scientific evidence for the potential utilization of LP-A8 as an attractive functional food supplement candidate for the hyperlipidemia population.
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