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Updated: Feb 21, 2026

Sequencing of Plant Wall Heteroxylans Using Enzymic, Chemical Methylation and Physical Mass Spectrometry, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Techniques
Published on: March 24, 2016
Enzymatic purification and structure characterization of glucuronoxylan from water extract of Cassia obtusifolia
Lei Feng1, Jun-Yi Yin1, Shao-Ping Nie1
1State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330047, Jiangxi, PR China.
Abstract:
Enzymatic hydrolysis was proposed for the first time to purify the sub-fraction of water-extracted cassia polysaccharide (CP-40), and a homogeneous polysaccharide CP-40-M was obtained with relatively high yield. The structural features of CP-40-M were characterized using size-exclusion chromatography equipped with multiple detectors (SEC-MALLS), high-performance anion-exchange chromatography (HPAEC), methylation and gas chromatography-mass (GC-MS), as well as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra. The weight-average molecular weight for CP-40-M was determined to be 0.29×105Da, and the molar ratio of xylose to glucuronic acid was 4.62. The structure of CP-40-M was elucidated to be glucuronoxylan, with glucopyranosyluronic acid group terminally attached to O-2 of the →4)-β-Xylp-(1→ backbone. It was the first time to obtain this type of xylan from the water extract of Cassia obtusifolia seeds. The structure elucidation of CP-40-M was meaningful for better understanding the natural characteristics of cassia polysaccharide and important for their potential use in food industry and folk medicine.

