Enzymatic Hydrolysis of the Pectic Acid with a Yeast Endopolygalacturonase: Kinetic and Molecular Weight Distribution

Abstract

Oligogalacturonides are promising biomolecules for agricultural use, plant biotechnology and functional foods formulation, due to its potent and diverse biological activity, which is mainly a function of the polymerization degree of these ones. The establishment of optimal conditions to oligogalacturonides production requires to know the enzymatic kinetic and mode of action. In this work is studied the kinetic of pectic acid hydrolysis by means of a yeast endopolygalacturonase, as well as the characterization of the molecular weights distribution in the hydrolyzed. The results shown that hydrolysis occurs to maximum rate up to 25 % of hydrolysis, after decreasing progressively. In the hydrolyzed are only detected molecules with polymerization degree between 2 and 8, being specially enriched in tetramer (70 % (w/w)) and impoverished in dimer and in the species with size ≥6, when is compared with the most probable distribution. These results suggest that enzyme have a preferential attack mechanism and set the basis to the development of a structured model to prediction of kinetic and molecular weight distribution during pectic acid depolymerization.
Keywords: oligogalacturonides, pectic acid, endo-polygalacturonase, depolymerization