Chemical Analysis and Health Benefits of a Novel Polysaccharide Produced by Paenibacillus mucilaginosus.

Researchers have been fascinated by the remarkable properties of naturally occurring polysaccharides in recent years. We focused on extracting, refining, and analyzing an exopolysaccharide secreted for the first time by the bacterium Paenibacillus mucilaginosus, which was isolated from agricultural soil and identified by 16S rRNA sequence techniques. The polymer's elemental composition was analyzed, focusing on three primary constituents. Carbon emerged as the dominant element, comprising 29.76% of the polymer's total mass. Hydrogen was present at 4.98%, while nitrogen comprised 3.19% of the overall elemental makeup. Exopolysaccharide was characterized by FTIR, HNMR, and 2D NOESY NMR spectroscopy. High-performance liquid chromatography analyses showed that the polysaccharide was a heteropolymer-containing rhamnose, fucose, galactose, and fructose as main sugars with 9.52, 8.03, 7.17, and 4.12 concentrations, respectively. The effects of various nitrogen and carbon sources on polymer production in batch culture medium were investigated. Fructose and yeast extract yielded the highest polymer dry weights at 9.4 and 7.3 g/L, respectively. Additionally, certain agricultural and industrial waste products were examined. The most significant polymer yield, nine g/L, was collected using a high-test molasses medium supplemented with yeast extract. This outcome was achieved after an incubation period of seventy-two hours at 30 °C in shaking flasks under batch culture conditions. The hepatoprotective efficacy of crude exopolysaccharide was assessed using the hepatoblastoma cell line. The exopolysaccharide demonstrated moderate hepatoprotective activity, with a protective effect of 34.61% observed at a concentration of 1000 µg/L.