Glucomannan fromCandida utilis

Abstract

Structure of the glucomannan isolated from the cell walls of Candida utilis has been investigated using acetolysis fragmentation, methylation analysis and NMR spectroscopy. The structure of the glucomannan resembles that of the cellular mannans of other Candida species, except that the longer tetra- and pentassacharide side-chains are terminated with a glucosyl residue. Presence of the nonreducing glucosyl groups at the ends of the side-chains caused the C. utilis not to cross-react in a double immunodiffusion test with other Candida species that possess mannan antigens and cross-react with Hansenula species with glucomannan antigens.

Candida utilis and Cyberlindnera (Pichia) jadinii: yeast relatives with expanding applications

“…Besides pentoses, C. utilis also assimilates other carbon sources such as organic acids, alcohols, propionaldehyde, and acetaldehyde, as well as various nitrogen sources including nitrate, nitrite, urea, ammonium hydroxide, and amino acids, which allows its growth on many biomass-derived waste substrates, e.g., spent sulfite liquor wheat, molasses, and ryegrass straw (Bekatorou et al 2006). Following its initial use as a dietary supplement, different endogenous compounds were isolated from C. utilis including invertase (Dworschack and Wickerham 1961;Belcarz et al 2002), glutathione (reviewed in Li et al 2004), ribonucleic acids (Boze et al 1992), glucomannan (Kogan et al 1993;Ruszova et al 2008), phospholipase B (Fujino et al 2006), or biotin (Hong et al 2006). Furthermore, C. utilis was recently used for the biotransformation of benzaldehyde to L-phenylacetylcarbinol, an important precursor for the production of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (Khan and Daugulis 2010).…”

Synthesis of biotinylated pentasaccharide structurally related to a fragment of glucomannan from Candida utilis

“…(a) Generalized structure of mannan of Candida albicans according to published data. 8,15 (b) Mannan structure published for C. utilis16 . The dashed frame encloses the oligosaccharide fragment corresponding to pentasaccharide 1 synthesized in this study (see Fig.2).…”