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Pentadin
Pentadin, a sweet-tasting protein, was discovered and isolated in 1989, in the fruit of Oubli (''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' ), a climbing shrub growing in some tropical countries of Africa. The fruit has been consumed by the apes and the natives for a long time. The berries of the plant were incredibly sweet African locals call them "j'oublie" (French for "I forget") because their taste helps nursing infants forget their mothers' milk. Pentadin, with brazzein discovered in 1994, are the 2 sweet-tasting proteins discovered in this African fruit. Pentadin molecular weight estimated to be 12kDa. It is reported to be 500 times sweeter than sucrose Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined ... on a weight basis, with its sweetness having a slow onset and decline similar to monelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mabinlin
Mabinlins are sweet, sweet-tasting proteins extracted from the seed of mabinlang (''Capparis masaikai Levl.''), a plant growing in Yunnan province of China. There are four homologues. Mabinlin-2 was first isolated in 1983 and characterised in 1993, and is the most extensively studied of the four. The other variants of mabinlin-1, -3 and -4 were discovered and characterised in 1994. Protein structures The 4 mabinlins are very similar in their Amino acid#Table of standard amino acid abbreviations and properties, amino acids peptide sequence, sequences (see below). ''Chain A'' M-1: M-2: M-3: M-4: ''Chain B'' M-1: M-2: M-3: M-4: ''Amino acid sequence of Mabinlins homologues are adapted from Swiss-Prot biological database of protein. The molecular weights of Mabinlin-1, Mabinlin-3 and Mabinlin-4 are 12.3 Atomic mass unit, kDa, 12.3 kDa and 11.9 kDa, respectively. With a molecular weight of 10.4kDa, mabinlin-2 is lighter than mabinlin-1. It is a heterodimer consisting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sugar Substitutes
A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may be derived through manufacturing of plant extracts or processed by chemical synthesis. Sugar substitute products are commercially available in various forms, such as small pills, powders, and packets. In North America, common sugar substitutes include aspartame, monk fruit extract, saccharin, sucralose, and stevia; cyclamate is also used outside the United States. These sweeteners are a fundamental ingredient in diet drinks to sweeten them without adding calories. Additionally, sugar alcohols such as erythritol, xylitol, and sorbitol are derived from sugars. Approved artificial sweeteners do not cause cancer. Reviews and dietetic professionals have concluded that moderate use of non-nutritive sweeteners as a safe replacement for sugars can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sweet
Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones, and sugar alcohols. Some are sweet at very low concentrations, allowing their use as non-caloric sugar substitutes. Such non-sugar sweeteners include saccharin and aspartame. Other compounds, such as miraculin, may alter perception of sweetness itself. The perceived intensity of sugars and high-potency sweeteners, such as Aspartame and Neohesperidin Dihydrochalcone, are heritable, with gene effect accounting for approximately 30% of the variation. The chemosensory basis for detecting sweetness, which varies between both individuals and species, has only begun to be understood since the late 20th century. One theoretical model of sweetness is the multipoint attachment theory, which involves multiple binding sites between a sweetnes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proteins
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, responding to stimuli, providing structure to cells and organisms, and transporting molecules from one location to another. Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids, which is dictated by the nucleotide sequence of their genes, and which usually results in protein folding into a specific 3D structure that determines its activity. A linear chain of amino acid residues is called a polypeptide. A protein contains at least one long polypeptide. Short polypeptides, containing less than 20–30 residues, are rarely considered to be proteins and are commonly called peptides. The individual amino acid residues are bonded together by peptide bonds and adjacent amino acid residues. The sequence of amino acid residues ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oubli
''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' is an evergreen shrub or liana that is the only species assigned to the genus ''Pentadiplandra'', and has been placed in a family of its own called Pentadiplandraceae. It produces large red berries, sometimes mottled with grey. It is known from West-Central Tropical Africa, between northern Angola, eastern Nigeria and western Democratic Republic of Congo. The berry is sweet in taste due to the protein, brazzein, which is substantially sweeter than saccharose. Brazzein may be useful as a low-calorie sugar substitute, sweetener, but is not yet allowed as a food additive in the United States and the European Union. Description ''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' is a Plant reproductive morphology#Variations, monoecious shrub of maximally , but can also develop into a liana, climbing up to high in the trees. The shrub Polymorphism (biology), morph usually has a mass of branched bulging roots, while the liana morph has a large, fleshy tuber. The branches are wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentadiplandra Brazzeana
''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' is an evergreen shrub or liana that is the only species assigned to the genus ''Pentadiplandra'', and has been placed in a family of its own called Pentadiplandraceae. It produces large red berries, sometimes mottled with grey. It is known from West-Central Tropical Africa, between northern Angola, eastern Nigeria and western Democratic Republic of Congo. The berry is sweet in taste due to the protein, brazzein, which is substantially sweeter than saccharose. Brazzein may be useful as a low-calorie sweetener, but is not yet allowed as a food additive in the United States and the European Union. Description ''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' is a monoecious shrub of maximally , but can also develop into a liana, climbing up to high in the trees. The shrub morph usually has a mass of branched bulging roots, while the liana morph has a large, fleshy tuber. The branches are without hair and carry alternately set, simple and entire leaves, without stipules at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Ernest Baillon
Henri Ernest Baillon was a French botanist and physician. He was born in Calais on 30 November 1827 and died in Paris on 19 July 1895. Baillon spent his professional life as a professor of natural history, and he published numerous works on botany. He was appointed to the Légion d'honneur in 1867 and joined the Royal Society in 1894. Baillon put together the "Dictionnaire de botanique", for which Auguste Faguet produced the wood engravings. The plant genus '' Baillonia'' (family Verbenaceae) was named in his honor by Henri Théophile Bocquillon Henri Théophile Bocquillon (5 June 1834, Crugny – 15 May 1884, Paris) was a French botanist. In Paris, he successively worked as an instructor at the Lycée Napoleon (from 1858), Lycée Louis-le-Grand (from 1862), Lycée Henri-IV (from 186 .... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, behind Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, tribalism, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Afr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brazzein
Brazzein is a sweet-tasting protein extracted from the West African fruit of the climbing plant Oubli (''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'' Henri Ernest Baillon, Baillon). It was first isolated by the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1994. Brazzein is found in the extracellular region, in the pulp tissue surrounding the seeds. With pentadin, discovered in 1989, brazzein is the second sweet-tasting protein discovered in the Oubli fruit. Like the other sweet proteins discovered in plants, such as monellin and thaumatin, it is extremely sweet compared to commonly used sweeteners (500 to 2000 times sweeter than sucrose). The fruit tastes sweet to humans, monkeys, and bonobos, but gorillas have mutations in their sweetness receptors so that they do not find brazzein sweet, and they are not known to eat the fruit. Traditional use The Oubli plant (from which the protein was isolated) grows in Gabon and Cameroon, where its fruit has been consumed by the apes and local people for a long time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Mass Unit
The dalton or unified atomic mass unit (symbols: Da or u) is a non-SI unit of mass widely used in physics and chemistry. It is defined as of the mass of an unbound neutral atom of carbon-12 in its nuclear and electronic ground state and at rest. The atomic mass constant, denoted ''m''u, is defined identically, giving . This unit is commonly used in physics and chemistry to express the mass of atomic-scale objects, such as atoms, molecules, and elementary particles, both for discrete instances and multiple types of ensemble averages. For example, an atom of helium-4 has a mass of . This is an intrinsic property of the isotope and all helium-4 atoms have the same mass. Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), , has an average mass of approximately . However, there are no acetylsalicylic acid molecules with this mass. The two most common masses of individual acetylsalicylic acid molecules are , having the most common isotopes, and , in which one carbon is carbon-13. The molecular mass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sucrose
Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined from either sugarcane or sugar beet. Sugar mills – typically located in tropical regions near where sugarcane is grown – crush the cane and produce raw sugar which is shipped to other factories for refining into pure sucrose. Sugar beet factories are located in temperate climates where the beet is grown, and process the beets directly into refined sugar. The sugar-refining process involves washing the raw sugar crystals before dissolving them into a sugar syrup which is filtered and then passed over carbon to remove any residual colour. The sugar syrup is then concentrated by boiling under a vacuum and crystallized as the final purification process to produce crystals of pure sucrose that are clear, odorless, and sweet. Suga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monellin
Monellin, a sweet protein, was discovered in 1969 in the fruit of the West African shrub known as serendipity berry (''Dioscoreophyllum cumminsii''); it was first reported as a carbohydrate.GE Inglett, JF May. Serendipity berries - Source of a new intense sweetener. J Food Sci 1969, 34:408-411. The protein was named in 1972 after the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, U.S.A., where it was isolated and characterized. Protein composition Monellin's molecular weight is 10.7 Atomic mass unit, kDa. It has two noncovalently associated polypeptide chains: an A chain sequence with 44 amino acid residues, and a B chain with 50 residues. Monellin chain A (44 AA): Monellin chain B (50 AA): Amino acid#Table of standard amino acid abbreviations and properties, Amino acid sequence of the sweet protein monellin adapted from Swiss-Prot biological database of protein. Monellin has a secondary structure consisting of five beta-strands that form an antiparallel beta-sheet and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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