Optimization of in vitro carbohydrate digestion by mammalian mucosal alpha-aglucosidases and its applications to hydrolyze the various sources of starches

Abstract

Glycemic carbohydrates, such as starch and sucrose, are fully hydrolyzed into monosaccharides by mucosal aglucosidases in the small intestine. In this study, we optimized the reaction conditions of mammalian mucosal aglucosidases to digest various types of glycemic carbohydrates to determine their hydrolytic activity. The results clearly showed that mammalian mucosal alpha-glucosidases had different hydrolytic properties compared to fungal amyloglucosidase, which is commonly used in vitro assay to determine carbohydrate quality, on various sizes and alpha-linked carbohydrates. Furthermore, non-gelatinized and gelatinized starches from different botanical sources were differently hydrolyzed to glucose by the prepared solution of mammalian alpha-glucosidases and porcine pancreatic alpha-amylase. Thus, it is clearly suggested that the digestion of glycemic carbohydrates by the optimized reaction condition with mammalian mucosal alpha-glucosidases and pancreatic alpha-amylase can be applied to determine the carbohydrate quality and digestion properties as it is more reliable to human digestive enzymes compared to fungal or microbial alpha-glucosidases.