Fishing for a new source of proteoglycans, an important health food ingredient

Aggrecan, a significant component of proteoglycan (PG) possessing chondroitin sulfate (CS) in cartilaginous tissues, has turn out to be more and more well-known as an ingredient in overall health food stuff. In reality, proteoglycans from salmon nasal cartilage display organic properties these as antiaging, inhibition of angiogenesis, and attenuation of inflammatory responses. Commercially accessible chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) have only been geared up from salmon nasal cartilage. Though the head cartilage was found in other edible bony fishes, there is minor info on the composition of main proteins and their CS buildings in the head cartilage.

Now, in a new study revealed in the Worldwide Journal of Biology Macromolecules, a team of scientists led by Associate Professor Kyohei Higashi of Tokyo College of Science, and Dr. Naoshi Dohmae and Dr. Takehiro Suzuki of the RIKEN Middle for Sustainable Resource Science tackles this issue. “We identified that composition of PGs and their CS structure in the cranium of the Siberian sturgeon and Russian sturgeon were being identical to that in the salmon nasal cartilage,” experiences Dr. Higashi. The fishes for the study have been presented by Mr. Atsuhi Nakamura from Miyazaki Prefectural Fisheries Investigation Institute. This analyze was produced accessible online on March 23, 2022 and was printed in Volume 208 of the journal on May well 31, 2022.

All the fishes examined contained abundant CSPGs in the head cartilage. In depth investigation of CS framework in PGs derived from 10 bony fishes disclosed that the construction of CS derived from Perciformes ended up equivalent to that of CS derived from cartilage of terrestrial animals. On the other hand, the framework of CS from cranium of sturgeons was similar to that of CS from salmon nasal cartilage. In addition, they also observed that aggrecan, a key CSPG in the cartilaginous tissue, was conserved in 10 bony fishes.  In truth, the aggrecan protein from LOC117428125 and LOC117964296 genes registered in the Nationwide Centre for Biotechnology Details database was uncovered to be plentiful in the skull of sturgeons. Also, compositions of other PGs, collagens, and matrix proteins in the cranium of sturgeons were being very similar to that of salmon nasal cartilage.

Elaborating on the results of this examine, Dr. Kyohei Higashi suggests that “head cartilage from bony fishes is an underutilized resource and is typically discarded following food stuff processing. The PGs, in particular from the sturgeon, are very similar in CS framework to the salmon nasal cartilage, exhibiting that the sturgeon has a lot of potential to be an alternate resource of CSPGs for health food formulations.”