Arabinose health benefit and review

Arabinose is obtained from plant polysaccharides such as gums and hemicelluloses. Arabinose is a white crystalline aldose sugar monosaccharide containing five carbon atoms, and including an aldehyde (CHO) functional group. D-arabinose is the 2 epimer of D-ribose. It differs from D-ribose by having the opposite configuration at carbon 2. D-arabinose occurs in the polysaccharide arabinogalactan, a neutral pectin of the cell wall of plants and in the metabolites cytosine arabinoside and adenine arabinoside. Well known carbohydrates include glucose, fructose, arabinose, ribose, fucose, mannose, lyxose and xylose. Stevia extract does not have calories.

Arabinose human study
As of August 2009, we could not find a human study with arabinose supplements.

Saccharides and arabinose
Saccharides are almost always more common in nature as the "D" form. However, L-arabinose is more common than D-arabinose in nature and is found in nature as a component of biopolymers such as hemicellulose and pectin.

Arabinose research study in animals
L-Arabinose Feeding Prevents Increases Due to Dietary Sucrose in Lipogenic Enzymes and Triacylglycerol Levels in Rats1
Journal of Nutrition. 2001;131:796-799. Shigemitsu Osaki {dagger}, Tomoe Kimura, Tomomi Sugimoto, Susumu Hizukuri and Nobuko Iritani. Shigemitsu Osaki, Tomoe Kimura, Tomomi Sugimoto, Susumu Hizukuri and Nobuko Iritani. Faculty of Human and Cultural Studies, Tezukayama Gakuin University Sakai, Osaka 590-0113, Japan; Sanwa Cornstarch Co. Ltd., Kashiwara, Nara 634-0834, Japan and Faculty of Home Economics, Kobe Women’s University, Higashisuma, Kobe 654-8585, Japan
L-Arabinose is a natural, poorly absorbed pentose that selectively inhibits intestinal sucrase activity. To investigate the effects of L-arabinose feeding on lipogenesis due to its inhibition of sucrase, rats were fed 0–30 g sucrose/100 g diets containing 0–1 g L-arabinose /100 g for 10 d. Lipogenic enzyme activities and triacylglycerol concentrations in the liver were significantly increased by dietary sucrose, and arabinose significantly prevented these increases. Arabinose feeding reduced the weights of epididymal adipose tissue. Moreover, plasma insulin and triacylglycerol concentrations were significantly reduced by dietary L-arabinose. These findings suggest that arabinose inhibits intestinal sucrase activity, thereby reducing sucrose utilization, and consequently decreasing lipogenesis.

Laboratory studies
Regulation of arabinose and xylose metabolism in Escherichia coli.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2009 Dec 18. Desai TA, Rao CV. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States, 61801.
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli will often consume one sugar at a time when fed multiple sugars in a process known as carbon catabolite repression. The classic example involves glucose and lactose, where E. coli will first consume glucose and only when it has consumed all of the glucose will it begin to consume lactose. In addition to lactose, glucose also represses the consumption of many other sugars including arabinose and xylose. In this work, we characterized a second hierarchy in E. coli that exists between arabinose and xylose. We show that, when grown in a mixture of the two pentoses, E. coli will consume arabinose before it consumes xylose. Consistent with a mechanism involving catabolite repression, the expression of the xylose metabolic genes is repressed in the presence of arabinose. We found that this repression is AraC dependent and involves a mechanism where arabinose-bound AraC binds to the xylose promoters and represses gene expression. Collectively, these results demonstrate that sugar utilization in E. coli involves multiple layers of regulation, where cells will first consume glucose, then arabinose, and finally xylose. These results may be pertinent in the metabolic engineering of E. coli strains capable of producing chemical and biofuels from mixtures of hexose and pentose sugars derived from plant biomass.

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