Reviewd-Glucans from edible mushrooms: A review on the extraction, purification and chemical characterization approaches
Section snippets
Introduction to mushroom D-glucans
Mushrooms have been appreciated and consumed for their nutritional value and medicinal properties in oriental countries for more than 2000 years. These fungi have traditionally been used for the prevention and also treatment of a multitude of disorders, and they have been increasingly consumed by cancer patients, during their treatments, as dietary supplements (Moradali et al., 2007, Hardy, 2008). Researchers have considered these fungi as healthy food because they are good sources of vitamins,
D-Glucans conventional extraction methods
The identification and characterization of carbohydrate structures requires, the isolation and purification of the polymer of interest from its original source. Regarding mushroom polysaccharides, they could be obtained from fruit bodies, mycelial biomass or directly from the liquid culture broth, as released exopolysaccharides (EPS). Besides that, spores and sclerotium from mushrooms also could be considered as sources for the extraction of glucans (Dong et al., 2012, Wang et al., 2014).
In
Purification methods
After polysaccharide extraction, samples could be submitted to several purification steps to remove other substances such as proteins, phenolic compounds, monossacharides, amino acids or other related molecules. Proteins can be removed by precipitation with trichloroacetic acid (20%, w/v), by treatment with the enzyme protease at 40 °C for 1 h (pH 7.5), using Sevag method (Staub, 1965), or by treatment with phenolic reagent (Synytsya et al., 2009).
Moreover, several purification steps must be
Available techniques for structure elucidation
Polysaccharides are challenging to analyze due to their high diversity of composition, linkages, configuration, ring conformation, and molecular weight. In addition, many carbohydrate characterization techniques are difficult, costly and time-consuming, which requires specialized chemical and biochemical training and the development of new tools and methodologies. The characterization of glycans is driven primarily by the application of chemistry-related techniques, and the tools commonly used
Structural features
Linear D-glucans were observed for some species of Basidiomycetes (Table 1) such as α-D-glucan (1 → 3)-linked (Nie et al., 2013, Bhanja et al., 2014), α-D-glucan (1 → 4)-linked (Palacios et al., 2012), β-D-glucan (1→3)-linked (Alquini et al., 2004, Chakraborty et al., 2006), and β-D-glucan (1 → 6)-linked (Li et al., 2013, Smiderle et al., 2013). These linear structures were obtained from edible mushrooms as Agaricus brasiliensis, Agaricus biporus, Coprinus comatus, Laetiporus sulphureus, Pleurotus
Biological activities
Mushroom polysaccharide extracts have been extensively studied as therapeutics for the treatment of many diseases. These fungi have been increasingly consumed as dietary supplements by cancer patients, during their treatments (Moradali et al., 2007, Hardy, 2008). The D-glucans are the main components of these extracts and, probably are mainly responsible for the medicinal effects observed. Among the mushroom extracts, the most used are derived from S. commune, Ganoderma lucidum, A. brasiliensis
Potential applications and future perspectives
The growing interest in renewable resources as well as to the wide applications of polysaccharides in medicine and food fields, such as the immunostimulatory and anti-tumor effects, and no toxicity has been prompted researchers out to investigate these polymers structure trying to establish a structure-activity relationship. However, despite the increase in research in this direction, little is known about the structural diversity of polysaccharides and how it affects their possible
Conclusions
Mushrooms are viewed as an important source of bioactive polysaccharides. The most common polysaccharide found in edible mushrooms consists of D-glucans; nevertheless, other polysaccharides, such as heterogalactans or heteromannans, or even polysaccharide-protein complexes can also be found.
D-Glucans have been considered as biological response modifiers due to their ability to enhance the immune system and, therefore, prevent and treat several common diseases and promote health.
In the last few
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Brazilian funding agencies: CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) and Fundação Araucária for financial support. A.C. Ruthes is beneficiary of post-doctoral scholarship from CAPES-PNPD (02675/09-9); F.R. Smiderle is beneficiary of post-doctoral scholarship from CNPq (150340/2014-1).
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