RESUMEN
Poria is an important medical herb in clinic. The authors isolated a polysaccharide(PCP-â ) from Poria in previous studies, which is composed of galactose, mannose, fucose and glucose. PCP-â exhibited significant adjuvant effects on H1N1 influenza vaccine, hepatitis B surface antigen and anthrax protective antigen, and its adjuvant activity was stronger than aluminium adjuvant. However, little is known about the chemical structure of PCP-â at present. In this study, weak acid hydrolysis was used to obtain the backbone oligosaccharide of PCP-â . Then periodate oxidation, Smith degradation, methylation analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FT-IR), nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS) were performed to investigate the chemical structural features of PCP-â and its hydrolytic oligosaccharide(PCP-â -hy-1). These results suggested that the backbone of PCP-â was composed of galactose with α anomeric carbon and ß anomeric carbon. The linking residues of galactan are(1â),(lâ6) and(1â2,6).