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Plants are valuable source of polysaccharides that make a large portion of our daily diet. These are natural polymers that are essential to sustain life. They provide high-value nutrition and positively help the immune system and improve the digestive properties. They also help in the elimination of toxic by-products from the human body. Polysaccharides and human health are inextricably linked and intertwined. These are also important components of the cell wall that provides its strength and integrity. Due to their indispensable role in human health, it is very important to know the different modifications and loss of nutritional value during the processing of plant material. Nowadays, these plant-based polysaccharides are used for diverse applications including wound dressing, drug delivery, laxative, cosmetic and pharmaceutical preparations. As an emerging area of plant-based medicines to reduce the side effects of synthetic sources, these polysaccharides are used to enhance the immunogenic response against a specific antigen. This review envisages some important polysaccharides (e.g. mucilages and gums, glycosamine glycans and chitin/chitosan) and their medical, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical applications, with emphasis on the relationship between their structure and function.Keywords: Polysaccharides; Nutrition; Health Functions; Cosmetics; Vaccine; Nutraceuticals

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Epilepsy is a chronic disease that affects millions of people worldwide and also a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Available antiepileptic drugs have series of side effects which encouraged us to explore different medicinal plants used against neurological disorders in traditional Indian medicinal system (TIMS). Therefore, we explored the antiepileptic potential of the Grewia tiliaefolia (Tiliaeceae) known for its neuroprotective properties in TIMS. Initially, aerial parts of G. tiliaefolia were subjected to extraction with increasing order of polarity viz. hexane, chloroform and methanol. Antioxidant potential of hexane, chloroform and methanol extracts of G. tiliaefolia was evaluated by DPPH, total antioxidant assay, reducing power assay and DNA nicking assay. Additionally, quantitative antioxidant assays were also conducted to quantify total phenolic and total flavonoid content. The methanol extract was found to possess very high antioxidant activity; therefore, its anticonvulsant potential was explored in PTZ induced epilepsy in mice. The methanol extract had shown significant anticonvulsant activity at 400 mg/kg. It had significantly increased the latency to occurrence of myoclonic jerks, generalized tonic clonic seizures (GTCS) and significantly decreased the duration of the GTCS and seizure severity score. The Grewia tiliaefolia methanol extract was further screened by HPLC for detection of polyphenolic compounds, among which gallic acid and kaempferol were present in higher amount and were further analyzed by in silico study to predict their possible binding sites and type of interactions these compounds show with gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) receptor and glutamate α amino-3- hydroxyl-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptor. It was revealed that gallic acid and kaempferol had shown agonistic interaction with GABA receptor and antagonistic interaction with Glutamate AMPA receptor. We concluded that G. tiliaefolia showed potent anticonvulsant potential due to the significant antioxidant activity possibly because of gallic acid and kaempferol.

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