Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship Models for the Antioxidant Activity of Polysaccharides

In this study, quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models for the antioxidant activity of polysaccharides were developed with 50% effective concentration (EC(50)) as the dependent variable. To establish optimum QSAR models, multiple linear regressions (MLR), support vector machines (SVM) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were used, and 11 molecular descriptors were selected. The optimum QSAR model for predicting EC(50) of DPPH-scavenging activity consisted of four major descriptors. MLR model gave EC(50) = 0.033Ara-0.041GalA-0.03GlcA-0.025PC+0.484, and MLR fitted the training set with R = 0.807. ANN model gave the improvement of training set (R = 0.96, RMSE = 0.018) and test set (R = 0.933, RMSE = 0.055) which indicated that it was more accurately than SVM and MLR models for predicting the DPPH-scavenging activity of polysaccharides. 67 compounds were used for predicting EC(50) of the hydroxyl radicals scavenging activity of polysaccharides. MLR model gave EC(50) = 0.12PC+0.083Fuc+0.013Rha-0.02UA+0.372. A comparison of results from models indicated that ANN model (R = 0.944, RMSE = 0.119) was also the best one for predicting the hydroxyl radicals scavenging activity of polysaccharides. MLR and ANN models showed that Ara and GalA appeared critical in determining EC(50) of DPPH-scavenging activity, and Fuc, Rha, uronic acid and protein content had a great effect on the hydroxyl radicals scavenging activity of polysaccharides. The antioxidant activity of polysaccharide usually was high in MW range of 4000–100000, and the antioxidant activity could be affected simultaneously by other polysaccharide properties, such as uronic acid and Ara.