BIOLOGICAL-ACTIVITY AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATION OF ALKALINE-SOLUBLE POLYSACCHARIDES FROM THE KERNELS OF PRUNUS-MUME SIEB ET ZACC

The fruits of Prunus mume SIEB. et ZACC. (Japanese name, ume) have bee n used as a traditional drug and health food. In order to study the ac tive components of P. mume, the polysaccharide fractions were extracte d with cold water, hot water and aqueous sodium hydroxide from the ker nels of P. mume. We found that some of the polysaccharide fractions ex hibited various types of biological activities such as mitogenesis, ac tivation of the alternative pathway of complement and activation of cl ot formation in human plasma. A polysaccharide, P-1, obtained from the cold 0.5 M NaOH extract was purified by ion-exchange chromatography a nd gel-filtration. P-1 contained 62.0% neutral sugar as glucose and 38 .4% uronic acid(as galacturonic acid), and was free from protein. The neutral sugars of P-1 were arabinose, xylose, rhamnose and galactose i n a molar ratio of 9.4 : 3.4 : 1.1 : 1.0, following analysis by gas-li quid chromatography. In addition, galacturonic acid was identified by thin-layer chromatography. The molecular weight of P-1 was found to be more than 2000000 by gel-filtration on Toyopearl HW 65F. P-1 showed m itogenic activity towards spleen cells of both C3H/HeN and C3H/HeJ, su ggesting that it was free from bacterial endotoxic lipopolysaccharides .