Mannans structure, from ivory nuts

Hess and coworkers53 have isolated mannose-containing polysaccharides from both ivory nuts and from pine wood pulp, and these mannans appeared to have identical properties. Both gave specific rotations of approximately —45° in N sodium hydroxide and +285° in cuprammonium (0.04 mole hexose anhydride, 0.10 mole copper, 10.0 moles ammonia per liter). The exact composition of these polysaccharides is not known Yundt54 has recently stated that mannan A from ivory nuts assayed only 50 percent mannose. The cuprammonium rotation data cannot be interpreted in terms of the fine structure until the composition of the mannans is known with certainty. 

The unbranched structure of p-1 4 D-mannans from ivory nuts has been... 

The structure of the mannan, or mannans, in wood cannot be described with certainty. Hess and Liidtke isolated a mannan from pine sulfite pulp identical with ivory-nut mannan-A in optical rotation and x-ray diagram. Husemann prepared, from spruce hemicellulose, fractions having rotational values in agreement with those for the mannan from pine sulfite... 

Crystals of ivory nut D-mannan have been grown on microfibrils from Valonia sp. cellulose. These crystals were in the form of perpendicularly orientated lamellae with widths of ca. 10 A as revealed by electron microscopy. The structure has been designated a shish-kebab type structure. Precipitation of the D-mannan on beaten softwood pulp fragments also gave shish-kebab type structures, indicating that the cellulosic fibre cell wall is a good substrate for orientated crystallization of D-mannan. 

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