Antioxidant and antiaging activities of the polysaccharide ZJP-04M from Ziziphus jujuba in Caenorhabditis elegans

Aging is a social problem that people pay particular attention to. Oxidative stress is closely related to aging. Natural polysaccharides have numerous biological activities, and they show good application prospect in preventing oxidative stress and aging prospects. Herein, morphological analysis, molecular weight analysis, monosaccharide composition, methylation analysis, and NMR spectrum analysis were used to characterize the structure of ZJP-04M, an isolated homogeneous polysaccharide from the Ziziphusjujuba fruit. Results indicated that in ZJP-04M, the trunk chain was formed through the alternately connected homogalacturonan skeleton and rhamnogalacturonan-I domain and the branch chain was formed by arabinan and arabinogalactan. After feeding the polysaccharide to Caenorhabditis elegans, ZJP-04M was found to exert a certain paraquet-induced protective effect on the oxidative damage. Under normal conditions, ZJP-04M could significantly prolong the lifespan of C. elegans but exhibited no obvious effect on its reproductive capacity. We futher confirmed that ZJP-04M can play an antiaging role by regulating DAF-16. Based on these results, ZJP-04M can be used in antioxidation and antiaging applications.