dextrann.
/ˈdɛkstran/ a. Chemistry. An amorphous, gummy substance produced by the fermentation of sucrose and some other organic materials, and now known to include many structurally related branched polysaccharides of glucose and to be produced only by a few micro-organisms, notably bacteria of the genus Leuconostoc.
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1879 Jrnl. Chem. Soc. 36 A. 912 Beetroot Gum..is converted..after some days' boiling with a solution of potash into dextran.
1939 Thorpe's Dict. Appl. Chem. (ed. 4) III. 567/2 Dextran, C6H10O5, or viscose, is a gum which occurs in the unripe sugar beet... An animal dextran..is found in the galls produced on elms by the louse.
1946 Adv. in Carbohydrate Chem. 2 209 The term ‘dextran’ has been applied to carbohydrate slimes originating from sugar sirups, fermenting vegetables and dairy products.
1970 R. W. McGilvery Biochemistry xxviii. 707 A column packed with beads of dextran, available under the trade name Sephadex, can be used to separate molecules of varying size.
b. Medicine. A preparation of degraded, partially hydrolysed dextran in a suitable solvent (as saline solution), used as a substitute for blood plasma.
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1948 Daily Express 24 Feb. 3/2 Synthetic blood..is known as dextran.
1963 Brit. Pharmaceut. Codex 239 Dextran injection is used as a plasma substitute. It is not, however, a complete substitute.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online June 2018).
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