Polysaccharide systems, structuring carrageenan

Dea, I. C. M., McKinnon, A. A., and Rees, D. A. (1972). Tertiary and quaternary structure in aqueous polysaccharide systems which model cell wall cohesion reversible changes in conformation and association of agarose, carrageenan and galactomannans. J. Mol. Biol. 68 153-172. 

A number of factors must be considered when selecting a suitable polysaccharide or combination of polysaccharides to fabricate a biopolymer-based delivery system. It is important to establish suitable environmental and solution conditions in which the polysaccharide molecules can associate with other polysaccharide or non-polysaccharide structure-forming molecules. To do so, one needs to know the physicochemical properties of the polysaccharides involved, such as helix-coil transition temperatures (for carrageenan, alginate,pectin) electrical properties (pKa values) sensitivity to specific monovalent or multivalent ions or susceptibility to enzyme or chemical reactions (BeMiller and Whistler, 1996). The most widely used carbohydrates for encapsulation purposes are probably alginates (Kailasapathy and Champagne, 2011 Kainmani et al, 2011), starch (Li et al, 2009) and its linear biopolymer amylose (Lalush et al, 2005). 

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