Two polysaccharides (ESP-A1 and ESP-A2) were isolated from the cold water extract of Ephedra sinica Stapf and purified through ethanol precipitation, deproteinization and by ion exchange and gel-filtration chromatography. Their molecular weight was determined using high performance size exclusion chromatog-raphy and evaporative light scattering detector (HPSEC-ELSD) and their monosaccharide composition was analyzed by high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) based on pre-column derivatization with 1-phenyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (PMP). It was shown that ESP-A1 consisted of xylose, arabinose, glucose, mannose and galactose and ESP-A2 consisted of xylose, arabinose, rhamnose and galactose, in a molar ratio (%) of 3.2: 61.1: 11.1: 12.9: 11.6 and 20.6: 67.7: 5.0: 6.7, respectively. The molecular weights (Mw) of ESP-A1 and ESP-A2 were 5.83 × 104 Da and more than 200 × 104 Da, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, two neutral polysaccharides are now being reported for the first time in this study.
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