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Carl Rämgård
- PhD student
- KTH
PhD project: Enzymatic Engineering of Hemicellulose Hydrogels
Supervisor: Francisco Vilaplana
Dissertation planned to: 2026
Research area:
- Food waste is a hot topic in the current environmental debate. From the agricultural industry, one major source of food waste is cereal bran[1]. The fibrous, outer husk that encapsulates the edible seed of most grain varieties. The bran is mainly composed of polysaccharides, primarily arabinoxylans[2]. These polysaccharides are heavily substituted and in turn are also covalently linked phenolics. The main phenolic being ferulic acid, which is the most commonly abundant phenolic in most cereal grains [3]. These polysaccharides, or dietary fibres have proven to have significant nutritional health benefits in prebiotic gut fermentation and contributing functional properties to food products [4, 5], both based on their structure but also the phenolic substitutions. These properties make arabinoxylans an essential biopolymer for valorisation of a common by product in one of the world’s biggest and most crucial industries. The presence of the phenolic substitutions enables the crosslinking of the polymers into stable hydrogels using oxidative laccase enzymes [6]. These hydrogels are especially interesting in vast array of applications, such as food additives in the form of nutrition or stabiliser, prebiotic application for the human gastrointestinal tract flora and novel drug delivery system for the GI-tract. Through enzymatic engineering, using selective hydrolases we have proven that cereal arabinoxylan can be modified to tailor their hierarchical assembly in hydrogels and improve their functional properties towards their potential valorisation as food ingredients. 1. Cui, S.W., Y. Wu, and H. Ding, 5 - The range of dietary fibre ingredients and a comparison of their technical functionality, in Fibre-Rich and Wholegrain Foods, J.A. Delcour and K. Poutanen, Editors. 2013, Woodhead Publishing. p. 96-119.2. Chanliaud, E., L. Saulnier, and J.F. Thibault, Alkaline extraction and characterisation of heteroxylans from maize bran. Journal of Cereal Science, 1995. 21(2): p. 195-203.3. Boz, H., Ferulic Acid in Cereals - a Review. Czech Journal of Food Sciences, 2014. 33: p. 01-07.4. Amritpal, K., et al., Isolation and characterization of arabinoxylans from wheat bran and study of their contribution to wheat flour dough rheology. Carbohydrate Polymers, 2019. 221: p. 166-173.5. Rosicka-Kaczmarek, J., et al., The influence of arabinoxylans on the quality of grain industry products. European Food Research and Technology, 2016. 242(3): p. 295-303.6. Yilmaz-Turan, S., et al., Revealing the mechanisms of hydrogel formation by laccase crosslinking and regeneration of feruloylated arabinoxylan from wheat bran. Food Hydrocolloids, 2022. 128: p. 107575.
- Research theme: 4-material concepts
