Fluorophore-Assisted Carbohydrate Electrophoresis (FACE) is a novel method of analysis that can detect saccharides labeled by fluorescent dye. Using FACE method enabled the visual detection of numerous kinds of saccharides such as glucose, arabinose, xylose, and their oligomers in barley Shochu mash. It was suggested that there are large amounts of arabinoxylan derived from barley. It furthermore seemed to be very hard to digest them entirely by enzymes existing in mash.
Moreover, FACE analysis was able to visualize the degradation process of saccharides in the main mash clearly and quantify the amounts of saccharides easily. Adding the hemicellulase in advance clearly demonstrated how the degradation processes of arabinoxylan into mono- and oligosaccharides occured in the mash. This report demonstrates that FACE analysis is a useful technique for investigating the behavior of saccharides that have very complex and variable compositions, such as in mash.
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