Abstract
BackgroundFucoidans are sulfated polysaccharides from the cell-wall of brown algae. They have a wide range of applications in medicine, including regenerative medicine, ophthalmology, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Biological activity of fucoidans directly depends on their structure, which remains poorly understood. This is primarily because the polymeric nature of these molecules limits the use of nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry, classical tools of structural biology for their structural characterization. Raman and Infrared spectroscopies are non-invasive and non-destructive techniques that can be used to probe the structural organization of biological specimens. In this study, we investigate the potential of Raman and Infrared spectroscopy for structural analysis of several fucoidan extracts.ResultsOur results show that Infrared and Raman provide different but complimentary information about the structure of crude extracts of fucoidans, revealing the presence of minor impurities from co-extractants. We also found that at high extraction temperatures acidic conditions limit formation of melanoidins, while also yielding relatively high sulfate ester fucoidan. However, at high temperatures, water extraction may potentially result in formation of advanced glycation end products. Their presence could be problematic for fucoidan extracts intended for medicinal use, as advanced glycation end products have been linked to endocrine interruption mechanisms in vivo by crosslinking to and permanently altering extracellular matrix proteins.ConclusionRaman and Infrared can be used as complementary tools for rapid screening of crude fucoidan extracts, which can be a valuable tool for assessing impurities that remain after extraction.
Highlights
Fucoidans are sulfated polysaccharides from the cell-wall of brown algae
A massive poly- mer with a molecular weight above 50000 kDa accounts for 16% of the water extracts, which greatly exceeds the average weight of fucoidan
This suggests that polymerization or the creation of another compound has taken place during fucoidan extraction
Summary
Fucoidans are sulfated polysaccharides from the cell-wall of brown algae. They have a wide range of applications in medicine, including regenerative medicine, ophthalmology, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Sulfated polysaccharides from the cell-wall of brown algae (fucoidans) are a di- verse family of polydisperse hetero-polymers with a wide range of applications in medicine, including regenerative medicine, ophthalmology, cancer [1, 2], and autoim- mune diseases [3] Their structure-pharmacological activity relationship has not Fucoidan extraction typically involves soaking the seaweeds in aqueous or acidic solutions at ambient or high temperatures, while isolation is often performed by several recipitation steps involving calcium chloride and ethanol to desalt and remove low-molecular weight compounds. Linear polymers, on the other hand, can axially rotate each bond in the polymer chain to fit the whole fucoidan molecule to a certain steric arrangement This structural property enables the fucoidan to interact with positively charged amino acid residues of receptor proteins [12]. Having such massive impact on bioactivity, it is very important to determine the fucoidan structure after extraction
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