Enzymatic pre-treatment of shiitake mushroom

Eritadenine is a substance that might help the Western world to overcome one of the biggest cause of death, cardiovascular disease, by lowering the levels of cholesterol in blood by an accelerated excretion of ingested cholesterol. The aim of this thesis work was to elucidate if enzymatic pre-treatment of shiitake mushrooms increases the yield of the extraction process of the valuable substance eritadenine by increasing the degradation of the fungal cell walls. The enzymes used in this study, had glucanase and chitinase activity and was a gift from Novozymes, Denmark. The extraction process involves treatment with methanol followed by extraction with ether and finally ion exchange in order to obtain a sample as pure as possible for analysis. In contrast to previously used methods the mushrooms are treated with enzymes before the methanol extraction, which hopefully facilitate the degradation of the cell walls. The results obtained with enzymatic pre-treatment showed a deterioration compared to extraction without enzyme treatment. This might be explained by an undeveloped method, where a great fraction of eritadenine was lost after the second ion exchanger. However, after this thesis work, an improved method yielded a 6% increase of eritadenine when enzymes were used.Validerat; 20101217 (root