Degradation and the antioxidant activity of polysaccharide from Enteromorpha linza

Polysaccharide extracted from Enteromorpha linza possesses excellent antioxidant activities, but its molecular weight was greatly high which influences the activity. In this study, the combination of ascorbic acid and H(2)O(2) was used as degradation reagents in order to obtain the lower molecular weight product. The results suggested that the most effective molar ratio of the two reagents was 1. Three degraded polysaccharides were selected to evaluate their antioxidant activities in vitro and characterized the relationship between antioxidant activity and chemical characteristics. It was found that the degraded sample with lower molecular weight possessed the higher antioxidant activities.