Studies on anticoagulant-active arabinan sulfates from the green alga, Codium latum

✍ Scribed by Tsutomu Uehara; Masao Takeshita; Masaakira Maeda

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 247 KB
• Volume: 235
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6215
• DOI: 10.1016/0008-6215(92)80100-f

✦ Synopsis

Among the various kinds of sulfated polysaccharides in the marine algal cell wall, blood anticoagulant activities similar to heparin have been reported for some of the sulfated polysaccharides such as fucoidan sulfate from Phaseophyta'. Since no heparin analogues (heparinoids) that are inhibitory to thrombin activities have been reported thus far from Chlorophyta, the distribution of antithrombin-active polysaccharides in these algae were surveyed2. Although the sugar constituents of water-soluble crude polysaccharides were found to differ from each other, and there were no chemotaxonomical correlations between activities and algal species, a common feature was that all the active compounds showed some sulfate ester content. In the crude, active polysaccharides surveyed, active rhamnan sulfate was found in the hot-water extracts of Monostroma nitidum2. This product was purified until it exhibited about seven times the activity of standard heparin; however, its lipid-clearing activity was less than that of heparin when injected intravenously into rats3. On the other hand, the cold-water extracts from Co&urn latum also showed remarkable activity. The polysaccharide so obtained was characterized as an arabinan sulfate after purification by anion-exchange chromatography, gel-filtration chromatography, and fractional precipitation with dilute potassium chloride solution. Herein, is described the isolation of the purified arabinan sulfate as well as some chemical properties that correlate with its observed activity.

After soaking and suspending the dried algae in ten volumes of distilled water, the mixture was homogenized and kept at room temperature for 1 h. Supernatants from centrifugation were dialyzed with tap water, then with distilled water, giving