Centre for Nutrition & Food Sciences (LCAFS), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia.
Anal Bioanal Chem. 2011 Feb;399(4):1425-38. doi: 10.1007/s00216-010-4435-8. Epub 2010 Nov 25.
Starch and glycogen are highly branched polymers of glucose of great importance to humans in managing and mitigating nutrition-related diseases, especially diabetes and obesity, and in industrial uses, for example in food and paper-making. Size-separation characterization using multiple-detection size-exclusion chromatography (SEC, also known as gel-permeation chromatography, GPC) is able to furnish substantial amounts of information on the relationships between the biosynthesis, processing, structure, and properties of these biopolymers, and achieves superior characterization for use in industrial product and process improvements. Multi-detector SEC is able to give much more information about structure than simple averages such as total molecular weight or size; the detailed information yielded by this technique has already given new information on important biosynthesis-structure-property reactions, and has considerable potential in this field in the future. However, it must be used with care to avoid artifacts arising from incomplete dissolution of the substrate and shear scission during separation. It is also essential in interpreting data to appreciate that this size-separation technique can only ever give size distributions, never true molecular weight distributions. Other size-separation techniques, particularly field-flow fractionation, require substantial technical development to be used on undegraded native starches.
淀粉和糖原是葡萄糖的高度支化聚合物，对于人类管理和减轻与营养相关的疾病（特别是糖尿病和肥胖症）以及工业用途（例如在食品和造纸行业）非常重要。使用多种检测尺寸排阻色谱法（SEC，也称为凝胶渗透色谱法，GPC）进行的大小分离特性分析，能够提供大量有关这些生物聚合物的生物合成、加工、结构和性能之间关系的信息，并实现卓越的特性，用于工业产品和工艺改进。多检测器 SEC 能够提供比总分子量或大小等简单平均值更多的关于结构的信息；该技术提供的详细信息已经为重要的生物合成-结构-性能反应提供了新的信息，并在未来在该领域具有相当大的潜力。然而，必须小心使用，以避免由于底物不完全溶解和分离过程中的剪切断裂而产生的伪影。在解释数据时，还必须认识到，这种大小分离技术只能给出大小分布，而不能给出真正的分子量分布。其他大小分离技术，特别是场流分级分离，需要大量的技术开发才能用于未降解的天然淀粉。
