Parameterizing amylose chain-length distributions for biosynthesis-structure-property relations.

Amylose, one of the components of starch, is a glucose polymer consisting largely of long, linear chains with a few long-chain branch points. The chain-length (molecular weight) distribution (CLD) of the component chains of amylose can provide information on amylose biosynthesis-structure-property relations, as has been done previously by fitting amylopectin CLDs to a model with physically meaningful parameters. Due to the presence of long chains, the CLD of amylose can currently best be obtained by size-exclusion chromatography, a technique that suffers from band-broadening effects which alter the observed distribution. The features of the multiple regions present in amylose chain-length distributions are also difficult to resolve, an issue that combines with band broadening to compound the difficulty of analysis and subsequent parameterization of the structural characteristics of amylose. A new method is presented to fit these distributions with biologically meaningful parameters in a way that accounts for band broadening. This is achieved by assuming that band broadening takes the form of a simple Gaussian over a relatively small region and that chain stoppage is a random process independent of the length of the substrate chain over the same region; these assumptions are relatively weak and expected to be frequently applicable. The method provides inbuilt consistency tests for its applicability to a given data set and, in cases where it is applicable, allows for the first nonempirical parameterization of amylose biosynthesis-structure-property relations from CLDs by using parameters directly linked to the activities of the enzymes responsible for chain growth and chain stoppage. Graphical abstract Model calculation illustrating the method described and showing the division between the three characteristic regions of a typical amylose chain-length distribution.