Chemical Composition and Antioxidant Activities of Three Polysaccharide Fractions from Pine Cones

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Ren-Bo Xu¹  Xin Yang¹  Jing Wang²  Hai-Tian Zhao¹  Wei-Hong Lu¹  Jie Cui¹  Cui-Lin Cheng¹  Pan Zou¹  Wei-Wei Huang¹  Pu Wang¹  Wen-Jing Li¹ 

[1] School of Food Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 73 Huanghe Road, Nangang District, Harbin 150090, China; E-Mails:;Key Laboratory of Agro-product Quality and Safety, Institute of Quality Standard & Testing Technology for Agro-Product, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No.12 Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China

关键词: Pinus;    pine cone polysaccharide;    GC-MS;    antioxidant activity;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms131114262

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The traditional method of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for monosaccharide component analysis with pretreatment of acetylation is described with slight modifications and verified in detail in this paper. It was then successfully applied to the quantitative analysis of component monosaccharides in polysaccharides extracted from the pine cones. The results demonstrated that the three pine cone polysaccharides all consisted of ribose, rhamnose, arabinose, xylose, mannose, glucose and galactose in different molar ratios. According to the recovery experiment, the described method was proved accurate and practical for the analysis of pine cone polysaccharides, meeting the need in the field of chemical analysis of Pinus plants. Furthermore; the chemical characteristics, such as neutral sugar, uronic acids, amino acids, molecular weights, and antioxidant activities of the polysaccharides were investigated by chemical and instrumental methods. The results showed that the chemical compositions of the polysaccharides differed from each other, especially in the content of neutral sugar and uronic acid. In the antioxidant assays, the polysaccharide fractions exhibited effective scavenging activities on ABTS radical and hydroxyl radical, with their antioxidant capabilities decreasing in the order of PKP > PAP > PSP. Therefore, although the polysaccharide fractions had little effect on superoxide radical scavenging, they still have potential to be developed as natural antioxidant agents in functional foods or medicine.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.