Seaweed, polysaccharides from tissues

Basic Structures of Some Polysaccharides from Animal and Seaweed Tissues Variations on a General Structure [A — (1 — 3) — B — (1 — 4) —] ... 

Xylan-type polysaccharides are the main hemicellulose components of secondary cell walls constituting about 20-30% of the biomass of dicotyl plants (hardwoods and herbaceous plants). In some tissues of monocotyl plants (grasses and cereals) xylans occur up to 50% [6j. Xylans are thus available in huge and replenishable amoimts as by-products from forestry, the agriculture, wood, and pulp and paper industries. Nowadays, xylans of some seaweed represent a novel biopolymer resource [4j. The diversity and complexity of xylans suggest that many useful by-products can be potentially produced and, therefore, these polysaccharides are considered as possible biopolymer raw materials for various exploitations. As a renewable resource, xylans are... 

The isolation of protein from seaweeds is a difficult task due to the link between polysaccharides and protein within the seaweed matrix. It is described that the extraction of proteins from the tissues of laminarialean algae (Nagai et ah, 2008) or Saccharina japonica (Kim et ah, 2011) is difficult due to high levels of nonprotein interfering compounds, mainly viscous polysaccharides. As a consequence, isoelectric point (Ma et ah, 1996) or ammonium sulfate saturation (Hemandez-Mireles and Rito-Palomares, 2006) or trichloro acetic acid (Barbarino and Louren o, 2005) approaches, which are cormnonly used for protein precipitation, are not completely useful for seaweeds. Thus, to solve this task, different approaches are proposed such as proteolytic treatment of the whole seaweeds followed by filtration and dialysis (Suetsima and Nakano, 2000) or treatment... 

Alginate, a natural polysaccharide, is obtained from seaweed and finds widespread use in tissue engineering research. Alginate is comprised of chains of guluronic acid and marmuronic acid, with the amoxmt and length... 

Polysaccharides are used to modify the flow characteristics of fluids, to stabilize suspensions, to flocculate particles, to produce emulsions, and to encapsulate materials. The majority of polysaccharide additives used by the food industry are extracted from higher plant tissue and seaweeds. Plants synthesize such polymers to serve as stmctural components of cell walls or as a source of stored energy. However, these polymers have potential problems because of their variations in cost, limited supply and chemical stmcture. 

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