β-Glucans: Relationships between Modification, Conformation and Functional Activities

Abstract

β-glucan is a type of polysaccharide which widely exists in bacteria, fungi, algae, and plants, and has been well known for its biological activities such as enhancing immunity, antitumor, antibacterial, antiviral, and wound healing activities. The conformation of β-glucan plays a crucial role on its biological activities. Therefore, β-glucans obtained from different sources, while sharing the same basic structures, often show different bioactivities. The basic structure and inter-molecular forces of polysaccharides can be changed by modification, which leads to the conformational transformation in solution that can directly affect bioactivity. In this review, we will first determine different ways to modify β-glucan molecules including physical methods, chemical methods, and biological methods, and then reveal the relationship of the flexible helix form of the molecule chain and the helix conformation to their bioactivities. Last, we summarize the scientific challenges to modifying β-glucan’s conformation and functional activity, and discuss its potential future development.

Isolation and Purification of Glucans from an Italian Cultivar of Ziziphus jujuba Mill. and In Vitro Effect on Skin Repair

“…In recent years, glucans of oats and barley, in particular those ones with a β conformation, have just been studied in wound healing, showing multifunctional activities [8,10,11]. Glucans are present in various plant-origin foods and therefore can potentially be extracted from a variety of food matrices [12]. Glucans are biologically active biopolymers that exist in different structural organizations, depending on the food matrices [13].…”

The Utilization of Vegetable and Fruit Wastes for Saccharomyces cerevisieae Cell Wall Based β-Glucan Production with Antioxidant Activity

“…Antioxidant activity of ß-glucan extraction results was higher than the antioxidant activity of papaya waste. This happened because ß-glucan were extracted so produced higher biological activity (Wang et al, 2017). The main antioxidant component of papaya waste itself is polyphenol (Verghese et al, 2016).…”

“…There is an inverse proportion between antioxidant activity and particle size.The smaller particle size the higher antioxidant activity of ß-glucan (Kurek et al, 2016). The small size of ß-glucan having also a small molecular mass, will enable it to dissolve more readily thus making the antioxidant higher (Wang et al, 2017).…”

“…This occurred due to differences in the substrate used to produce ß-glucans and its purity (Piotrowska and Masek, 2015). ß-glucan microstructure with fermentation medium of napa cabbage waste has the smallest microstructure size, meaning it has the highest solubility thus resulted in the highest antioxidant activity (Wang et al, 2017). Meanwhile ß-glucan derived from papaya waste medium has a greater size than napa cabbage's but smaller size than banana's.…”

Strengths and weaknesses of the aniline-blue method used to test mushroom (1→3)-β-d-glucans obtained by microwave-assisted extractions

“…Previous studies suggested that the biological properties of these compounds are related to their chemical structure. Thus, characteristics such as the linkage type, polymerization level (Wang et al, 2017) or degree of branching (Lehtovaara & Gu, 2011) of such molecules might determine not only their biological but also their physic-chemical…”