The cell wall polysaccharides of certain oral streptococci function as receptors for the lectin-like surface adhesins on other members of the oral biofilm community. Recognition of these receptor polysaccharides (RPS) depends on the presence of a host-like motif, either GalNAcbeta1-3Gal (Gn) or Galbeta1-3GalNAc (G), within the oligosaccharide repeating units of different RPS structural types. T...

Armillaria mellea is a traditional Chinese medicinal and edible mushroom. Many cultured products of A. mellea have been used to develop commercial medicines in recent years. The chemical composition and activities of the major bioactive chemical components-polysaccharides-may be different because of differences in the raw materials used. Four polysaccharides (SP, CMP, CFBP and CFMP) were obtain...

Many polysaccharides are allowed for direct food use, where they serve a number of useful functions including dietary fiber, bulking agent, thickener, encapsulant, gelling agent, foam and emulsion stabilizer, protective colloid, emulsifier and suspending agent, adhesive and binder, flocculant, swelling agent, film/coat former, or syneresis inhibitor. Many of these polysaccharides have complex s...

Oxidative damage of biomolecules increases with age and is postulated to be a major causal factor of various physiological function disorders. Consequently, the concept of anti-age by antioxidants has been developed. Lycium barbarum fruits have been used as a traditional Chinese herbal medicine and the data obtained in in vitro models have clearly established the antioxidant potency of the poly...

Four crude water soluble polysaccharides, CABP, CAAP, CFVP and CLDP, were isolated from common edible mushrooms, including Agaricus bisporus, Auricularia auricula, Flammulina velutipes and Lentinus edodes, and their chemical characteristics and antioxidant properties were determined. Fourier Transform-infrared analysis showed that the four crude polysaccharides were all composed of β-glycoside ...

We have previously shown that in an animal model of sepsis positively and negatively charged groups on polysaccharide A of Bacteroides fragilis are essential for the induction of intra-abdominal abscess formation (A. O. Tzianabos, A. B. Onderdonk, B. Rosner, R. L. Cisneros, and D. L. Kasper, Science 262:416-419, 1993). By introducing chemical modifications into the structures of B. fragilis pol...

The effect of whole leaf and gel materials from two aloe species (Aloe vera and A. ferox) was compared with that of the precipitated polysaccharides from these aloe materials on the transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) as well as transport of a model compound (atenolol) in the apical-to-basolateral direction across rat intestinal tissue. All the aloe leaf materials and precipitated poly...

Encapsulated bacteria are responsible for the majority of mortality among neonates and infants. The major components on the surface of these bacteria are polysaccharides which are important virulence factors. Immunity against these components protects against disease. However, most of the polysaccharides are thymus-independent (TI)-2 antigens which induce an inadequate immune response in neonat...

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant Helicobacter pylori is of concern in the treatment of H. pylori-associated gastroduodenal diseases. As the organism was reported to bind gastric mucin, we used porcine gastric mucin as substrate to assess the antiadhesive property of polysaccharides derived from Spirulina (PS), a commercially available microalga, against the binding of H. pylori to gastric ...

The application of natural polysaccharides in novel drug delivery systems to deliver the bioactive agents has been hampered by the synthetic polymers. The main benefits of the natural polysaccharides are their being biodegradable, biocompatible, non-toxic, richly available and less expensive. Because of the advances in drug delivery technology, natural polysaccharides are included in novel drug...