Analyses of Aloe Polysaccharides Using Carbohydrate Microarray Profiling

Background: As the popularity of Aloe vera extracts continues to rise, a desire to fully understand the individual polymer components of the leaf mesophyll, their relation to one another, and the effects they have on the human body are increasing. Polysaccharides present in the leaf mesophyll have been identified as the components responsible for the biological activities of A. vera, and they have been widely studied in the past decades. However, the commonly used methods do not provide the desired platform to conduct large comparative studies of polysaccharide compositions, as most of them require a complete or near-complete fractionation of the polymers. Objective: The objective for this study was to assess whether carbohydrate microarrays could be used for the high-throughput analysis of cell wall polysaccharides in aloe leaf mesophyll. Methods: The method we chose is known as comprehensive microarray polymer profiling (CoMPP) and combines the high-throughput capacity of microarray technology with the specificity of molecular probes. Results: Preliminary findings showed that CoMPP can successfully be used for high-throughput screening of aloe leaf mesophyll tissue. Seventeen species of Aloe and closely related genera were analyzed, and a clear difference in the polysaccharide compositions of the mesophyll tissues was seen. Conclusions: These preliminary data suggest that the polysaccharides vary between species and that true species of Aloe may differ from segregate genera.