Branched-chain starch

More complex starches are termed amylopectins and contain branched chains. Starches can be very large molecules indeed, with molecular masses ranging up into the millions. 

The distinctions between these homopolymers arise from the different ways in which the monomer units are hooked together in polyacetal chains. Starch (qv), plant nutrient material, is composed of two polysaccharides a-amylose and amylopectin. cx-Amylose is linear because of exclusive a (1 — 4) linkages, whereas amylopectin is branched because of the presence of a (1 — 6) as well as a (1 — 4) links. The terms linear and branched refer only to primary stmcture. 

In starch, glucose molecules are joined head-to-tail through oxygen atoms. A thousand or more glucose molecules may be linked in this way. either in long single chains (amylose) or branched chains (amylopectin). 

Starches can be separated into two major components, amylose and amylopectin, which exist in different proportions in various plants. Amylose, which is a straight-chain compound and is abundant in potato starch, gives a blue colour with iodine and the chain assumes a spiral form. Amylopectin, which has a branched-chain structure, forms a red-purple product, probably by adsorption. 

Perhaps the most important advance in the chemistry of starch was the realization of the apparent inhomogeneity of the material, followed by its fractionation into simpler components—first carried out quantitatively by Schoch1 in 1941. Starches can, in general, be separated into at least two chemically distinguishable entities amylose, a mixture of essentially unbranched chains, and amylopectin, a mixture of highly branched chains.2... 

Products.—Considerable information concerning the mechanism of the enzymic hydrolysis of starch has been obtained from investigations of the action of purified maltase-free pancreatic amylase on a number of different substrates. The substrates studied were ordinary unfractionated but exhaustively defatted10 potato and com starches a branched chain substrate, waxy maize starch and amylose, the linear component of corn starch.41 69 eo f4 These investigations included comparisons not only of the rates of the hydrolysis of the different substrates but also of the products formed from them. 

With the same concentration of pancreatic amylase reacting under comparable conditions, no marked differences were observed in the rate of the hydrolysis of any of the unfractionated ordinary starches studied.41,69 6064 On the other hand significant differences were observed in the rate of the hydrolysis of straight and of branched chain substrates. The data60 in Table IV show that waxy maize starch is hydrolyzed more slowly than unfractionated corn starch and much more slowly than the... 

Taken as a whole, the results indicate that the amylase of Aspergillus oryzae causes the rapid random hydrolysis both of the straight and of the branched chain components of starch and that it hydrolyzes very slowly products with average molecular weights of penta- and tetra-saccharides. 

In general, the results with malted barley alpha amylase show that this amylase hydrolyzes readily the 1,4 a-D-glucopyranosidic linkages of the straight chain components and of the outer branches of the branched chain components of starch it also hydrolyzes the inner 1,4 a-D-gluco-pyranosidic linkages between the branches of the amylopectin com-... 

Jane, J., Chen, Y. Y., Lee, L. F., McPherson, A. E., Wong, K. S., Radosavljevic, M., and Kasemsuwan, T. (1999). Effects of amylopectin branch chain length and amylose content on gelatinization and pasting properties of starch. Cereal Chem. 76, 629-637. 

Which of the following is a branched chain polymer (a) HDPE, (b) iPP, (c) LDPE, or (d) amylose starch ... 

Most potato starches are composed of a mixture of two polysaccharides, a linear fraction, amylose, and a highly branched fraction, amylopectin. The content of amylose is between 15 and 25% for most starches. The ratio of amylose to amylopectin varies from one starch to another. The two polysaccharides are homoglucans with only two types of chain linkage, a-(l 4) in the main chain and a-(l 6)-linked branch chains. Physicochemical properties of potato and its starch are believed to be influenced by amylose and amylopectin content, molecular weight, and molecular weight distribution, chain length and its distribution, and phosphorus content (Jane and Chen, 1992). 

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