Fruit Fly Bioassay To Distinguish “Sweet” Sugar Structures

Abstract

Palatable response to dietary sugars plays a significant role in influencing metabolic health. New structures are being explored with beneficial health properties, although consumer acceptance relies heavily on desirable sensory properties. Despite the importance of behavioral responses, the ability to elucidate structure-preference relationships of sugars is lacking. A wild population of Drosophila melanogaster was used as a model to perform pairwise comparisons across structural groups to characterize a fruit fly bioassay for assessing sugar preference. Preference was successfully described in structurally relevant terms, particularly through the ability to directly test sugars of related structures in addition to standard sucrose comparisons. The fruit fly bioassay also provided the first report on the relative preference for the β-linked sugar alcohol, gentiobiitol. In making reference to well-known human preferences, the bioassay also raises opportunities for greater understanding of behavioral response to sugar structures in general.

Carboxyl-Based CPMP Tag for Ultrasensitive Analysis of Disaccharides by Negative Tandem Mass Spectrometry

“…Carbohydrates, as a moiety of glycoproteins and glycolipids, play essential roles in biological processes involving cell signaling, cell immunogenicity, and cell–cell interaction. , As the minimum component of glycans, disaccharides are stable and widely distributed in nature. , For example, sucrose provides energy to plant cells and is one of the raw materials of the carbon skeleton for the synthesis of lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. − Lactose is closely associated with the neurological development of the brain . The diversity in the biological activity of disaccharide isomers is due to subtle differences in their structure in terms of monosaccharide composition, linkage patterns, and isomeric conformation. − Therefore, the development of new analytical tools to detect isomeric disaccharides with high sensitivity and accuracy remains one of the challenging topics in glycomics research. Many advanced technologies, including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography have been used for carbohydrate discrimination.…”