Preparation and Physiological Effect of Low-molecular-weight Pectin

Tailored enzymatic production of oligosaccharides from sugar beet pectin and evidence of differential effects of a single DP chain length difference on human faecal microbiota composition after in vitro fermentation

“…A common theme in numerous papers regarding health promoting effects of pectin is the dependency of size of the applied poly-and oligosaccharides [12,14,16]. Nevertheless, the studies assessing the putative bioactivity of pectin have been performed using mixtures of heterogeneous pectin derived fractions with a relatively broad size distribution [9][10][11]18,19]. Several studies based on the pectic oligosaccharides generated by Olano-Martin et al [20] revealed that a low methoxyl fraction with a binominal molecular weight distribution of approximately 3.8 kDa and 0.97 kDa (roughly corresponding to DP21-23 and DP5-6) showed better potential as a health promoting candidate than a high methoxyl fraction with a molecular weight of approximately 3.5 kDa (corresponding to DP20-21).…”

Relationship between Molecular Weights of Pectin and Hypocholesterolemic Effects in Rats

“…Previously we reported that molecular weight of citrus pectin was rapidly reduced at the beginning, and finally to about 66,000 by a Kluyveromyces fragilis (K. fragilis) crude enzyme solution, and the pectin (66,000), which had low viscosity and high solubility, did not have the effect of repressing the serum cholesterol level. 3) In this report, we obtained low-molecular-weight pectin (LP) and medium-molecular-weight pectin (MP) by changing the time of the enzyme reaction, and compared the hypocholesterolemic activities of LP, MP, and original pectin.…”

“…The K. fragilis JTF-1 culture fluid (0.17 unit/ml) was prepared as described previously. 3,4) The other chemicals were reagent grade from Wako Pure Chemicals Co.…”

“…3,5) Male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats (3 weeks of age, Charles River Japan, Kanagawa, Japan) were fed a commercial nonpurified diet (Type MF, Oriental Yeast Co., Tokyo, Japan) for 4 days. The rats were then divided into five groups of six or nine animals and fed on a purified diet (Basal diet) or an atherogenic diet containing 1% cholesterol and 0.25% sodium cholate (Cholestrol diet) for 27 days.…”

“…After extracting the lipid from livers by the method of Folch et al,7) the cholesterol levels were assayed by the enzymatic method as described before. 3 ) Values were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (AN OVA), and differences of means were inspected using the Tukey-Kramer' method.…”