A polysaccharide extracted from the sea cucumber body wall has the same backbone
structure as the mammalian chondroitin sulfate, but some of the glucuronic acid residues
display sulfated fucose branches. These branches confer high anticoagulant activity to the
polysaccharide. Since the sea cucumber chondroitin sulfate has analogy in structure with
mammalian glycosaminoglycans and sulfated fucans from brown algae, we compared its
anticoagulant action with that of heparin and of a homopolymeric sulfated fucan with …