Purification of Mucilages from Dioscorea batatas and D.japonica and their Content Analysis

산약(山藥) 점액성분(粘液成分)의 정제(精製)와 함량분석(含量分析)에 관한 연구(硏究)

This study was conducted to further characterize mucilages from Dioscoreae Rhizoma, which have been known to be proteoglycans. We chose the two types of yams, Dioscorea batatas Dec. (club-like) and D. japonica Thunb. (cane-like). Repeated gel filtration of a dialyzed water extract of each fresh yam on Bio-gel P-100 and then Sephadex G-150 columns completely separated the mucilage from protein. Furthermore, gel filtration of a water extract from each yam processed by steaming and drying on the Bio-gel P-100 column gave only one polysaccharide peak without protein. These results revealed that the mucilages of yams were only composed of polysaccharide. Then we assessed some properties of the mucilages under three kinds of criteria: a complex-forming capacity between mucilage and alcian blue, mannose content in the mucilage, and viscosity. The complex-forming capacities of two types of fresh yams were closely similar with each other, but the processing of two types of the fresh yams greatly lowered the complex-forming capacity and viscosity.