What are saponins?
Saponins are a group of secondary metabolites found in many plants and in some marine organisms. They are composed of a sterol -based structure bound to one or more units of sugar. These natural products are very interesting as dietary compounds due to potential health benefits. However, one must be careful about their ingestion, because some are known poisons. The roots of soap plants, saponaria were originally used as a substitute for soap. This genus provided a name for these compounds. Several known members of this class include digitoxin with heart medicines produced from Foxglove, which is toxic in high concentrations. The deadly night shadow family is well known for the production of toxin solanin. Saponins have this ability due to their structure with different types of molecules at each end of the chemical. One end of the compound has one or more sugar units, which makes this part of the molecule soluble in water. The other end can dissolve in membranes. This groupIna Sterol is often a natural product known as Triterpen. It is a specific type of sterol, which contains several oxygen molecules. Although cholesterol corresponds to the chemical definition of triterpen, the plants instead produce phytosterols. Unlike the general beliefs of the plant, cholesterol does not contain.
Saponins have been studied for their role in the defense of plants for many years and is believed to protect the plant from infection of a number of plant pathogens. For years, it has been assumed that these compounds are impactive until the plant is attacked and after the attack the molecule is activated by sugar cleavage. Recent studies indicate from these compounds may be caused by infection instead of always present in inactive form.
After the sugar of the scoop is outside saponin, the remaining sterol compound is known as Aglyk. Can be inserted into membranes and cause a number of biologicalh effects. It can change the membrane fluidity and can cause the canals in the membranes. Inside the human digestive system, bacteria can break down sugars and generate active aglykon.
A number of studies of tubes indicated that various saponins have anti -cancer skills and abilities to improve the immune system. Saponins from soybeans are particularly interesting. It is assumed that the ability to protect against infection extends to mammals who ate plants containing these secondary metabolites. There is a lot of interest in the consumption of these compounds as phytonutrients to increase health. It may be wise to avoid the consumption of saponins until more studies on the safety of and the efficiency of these compounds are performed.