Talk:Trehalose

Glycemic response
Any information as to whether or not this substance causes a glycemic response (spikes your blood sugar) like sucrose, or if it attenuates this response? 0-0-0-Destruct-0 03:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Good question - wish I could remember off the top of my head. Trehalase in the gut is the determining step for breakdown into glucose. Its on the villi. Deficiency is rare. It would be the question of rate of release. GraemeLeggett 08:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I came to this page having eaten a snack product and read ingredients. I want to know about GI and if there were any other interactions. I had already guessed trehalose might be like maltose - hadn't remembered the term disaccharide at first, just knew maltose was rumoured to have higher gi than glucose due to delivering two glucose molecules at a time. The article mentions sweetness - but how is this connected to GI if at all? I also wondered about any evidence of other health risks - thinking of the heard-of mooting of diabetes-incidence risks of high fructose consumption. Mention here of water-holding properties made me think of glycerine - pregnant women and diabetics are advised caution with that. Not that I am diabetic.So who going to find the info and put it in? I think over all this article is written for undegraduate biochemists and commercial scientists, rather than the interested consumer. Can we do both? We're meant to avoid too much unexplained jargon, aren't we? (feel free to seperate those few last points into a new section - limited time here now). Kathybramley (talk) 11:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Xerobiosis
Xerobiosis, Is this a real term? Googling it only brings forth two results, both of them mentioned in Wikipedia entries.--Hooperbloob 03:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Added a bit of text based on my own memories of working with the stuff. GDL 1 Feb 2005

Haworth projection
Can we get this molecule in the haworth projection? Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)
 * Done. Welcome to Wikipedia, by the way! Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I think the Haworth projection is incorrect. The 2nd sugar should be a-D-glucose but the stereochemistry is inverted. I'll see if I can fix it later unless someone else does it first. I'm not sure what the formating is though. See http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/2carb/36.html for an image of trehalos  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.32.50.98 (talk) 00:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Use in Plant Engineering
The gene for trehalose synthesis was inserted into plants (both chloroplast and nuclear engineering) to investigate use in drought resistance. Rather successful, though it had some effects on growth etc when inserted into nuclear genome. Worthy of addition, under "Biotech. Apps", or perhaps a simple mention? Geno-Supremo (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
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The hayashibara stuff
Although it seems weird for the article to mention hayashibara in the lede and then not mention anything about it elsewhere, here's some (English language) references to Hayashibara's work on the stuff:  --moof (talk) 08:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)


 * this sounds more like advertisement rather that an encyclopedic info, especially because it is in the lead. --ArazZeynili (talk) 13:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I still don't know if trehalose is good fom me the consumer> Is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.35.162.89 (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Trehalose intolerance
There is evidence of trehalose intolerance, similar in symptoms to lactose intolerance. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11941647 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10522609. Perhaps it should be mentioned also here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.250.234.56 (talk) 15:07, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

C diff correlation
there is evidence in an article in the LA Times that C diff thrives on this carb http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sugar-c-diff-20180103-story.html http://richardsprague.com/microbiome/2017/01/31/c-difficile-and-trehalose.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 40.140.201.66 (talk) 05:49, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Fascinating article in Nature which someone listed and someone else reverted

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/science/2018/01/04/Did-a-popular-sugar-additive-fuel-the-spread-of-two-superbugs/stories/201801030272

This is a rather hot development, need to flag this article as a developing topic. I don't think this can be ignored by Wikipedia any more than an outbreak of Ebola. Keith Henson (talk) 04:09, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the paper is (Not even pubmed indexed yet per this).  And it is not all C dificile but two specific strains (with, interestingly, different mutations)
 * It is a super interesting story. It is at this point just interesting science however.  The coverage in Nature's associated commentary here was very  responsible science journalism, unlike a lot of the dreck that has been in the popular media about this.  This is the key paragraph:
 * "The study’s findings raise several avenues for future research. For instance, the connection between trehalose metabolism and toxin production, and how this is linked to increased death rates in people infected with RT027, will require further analysis. Whether trehalose in the human colon, where disease occurs, reaches high enough levels to affect RT027 and RT078 virulence is also unknown. The authors tested fluid from the small intestine, thus bypassing the colon, where the complex complement of gut microbes might break down trehalose."
 * Those unknowns are real. They are things we do not know. What we know is that there is a correlation.  But correlation is not causation.  Example "A study found that college students who went to sleep with their clothes on tended to wake up with headaches".  What does this mean??  Is their circulation being cut off or do they overheat and this harms their brains?   Well, they didn't study whether or not the students were drinking before they went to bed... right?  And going to bed drunk would explain both the clothes on and the headache.  You have to be careful with correlations.
 * That is not even bringing in the question of whether other groups will be able to replicate this. There is a replication crisis in academic science.
 * It is for reasons like this that we have MEDRS and don't "report" science news like this. It may turn out to be nothing.  It may turn out to be something.
 * It is nothing like Ebola at this point. Jytdog (talk) 05:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)


 * If it really is behind ~30,000 peoply dying, it's somewhat bigger than twice the Ebola death count. There is no question of controversity in the news about this and frankly the work reported in Nature looks good.  My quess is that there will be a scramble to get it out of the food chain, even though it does not directly harm people.  It seems that the article should at least mention the controversity even it is dies out and trehalose is not withdrawn.  Wikipedia is going to look kind of stupid with no mention of the news stories.  Keith Henson (talk) 05:26, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You are pushing the science too hard and assuming that trehalose is causing C dificile deaths in humans. That is not what the paper says. Please look at WP:MEDREV (a section of MEDRS) and then please have a read of (long) lead of WP:Why MEDRS?  -- it may help you understand why we use literature reviews or statements by major medical or scientific bodies to source content about health (see WP:MEDDEF), and not primary scientific sources or popular media reporting on primary sources. Jytdog (talk) 07:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't read any of the news about this. But I will say that from the POV of a Wikipedia editor, it is usually easier and ultimately more effective to mention the "hot news" in the article, and to place it in some appropriate context, than to try to continually remove all mention.
 * In a case like this, I'd be inclined to recommend something like "In 2018, the popular news media reported that one early-stage research project found a statistical association between this chemical and a particular type of bacterial infection, at least in two strains of the bacteria. However, scientific experts do not know whether it exacerbates the infection, is a result of the infection, or is merely a chance finding." – using the appropriate details, of course. If no good evidence appears in a secondary source during the next year or two, then per MEDRS's advice on short-term use of primary sources, it could and should be removed ("If no reviews on the subject are published in a reasonable amount of time, then the content and primary source should be removed").  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The key bit the media is picking up on is "dietary trehalose increases the virulence of a RT027 strain in a mouse model of infection"
 * We could paraphrase this as "In 2018 the media commented on a study that found that mice feed trehalose who were infected with a specific type of ''C. difficile infection may develop worse disease."
 * Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:00, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * yes that would be a good idea(paraphrase)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:10, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's another article about this. It seems to be based on sources already mentioned here.
 * https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-curious-case-of-a-boring-sugar-that-may-have-unleashed-a-savage-plague/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.215.121.85 (talk) 18:15, 14 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I understand what is easy. I am not that interested in what is easy.
 * The Big News here is the correlation between the introduction of trehalose (after folks figured out how to manufacture it so it was scalable) and the increase in C dificile cases, in combination with the biological findings.  Really interesting and possibly important.  We just need MEDRS sources saying so, and like everything we can wait until we get them.  Again, people thought that shaking cells could turn them into stem cells and rushed to add content based on the hyped primary source to WP.  (Note the edit date, and the date the paper came out)  only to delete it later when the paper was retracted.   (We actually have a whole article on that mess Stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency)  We should not be jerking the public around like that.  There is no reason to do that - we have no deadline here.  We communicate accepted knowledge and we are not a  newspaper.Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that it actually is accepted knowledge that (a) this paper was published, and (b) nobody knows if it's "real".
 * Omitting all mention of "hot news" means that we're suppressing accepted knowledge, and leaving the reader to figure the situation out based upon whatever Twitter is saying at the moment. I don't think that's the best we can do.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Its been added already, WAID. See below and of course the article. 00:39, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

More sources for C. Diff.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2018/01/09/has-a-sucrose-alternative-contributed-to-the-c-diff-epidemic/

If this is not a good medical secondary source, then there are other medical articles that should have a reference to this source cleaned out. Keith Henson (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That is helpful. I have gone ahead and added a research section using that, and have cited it in the nutrition section as well. Jytdog (talk) 22:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not going to get in an edit war over this, but I think the journal is significant to the readers. Science and Nature are the two highest ranking journals in science.  People will take it more seriously than if it had been published in World Weekly News.Keith Henson (talk) 03:16, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "take it seriously." hm.  Not sure what you mean by that. If it had been in World Weekly News it would not be in a WP article.  this (mentioned in the section above) was also a Nature paper, btw.  Jytdog (talk) 05:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

What the...?
Opening para is way too technical. Tell me in plain English what this stuff is. 173.90.65.191 (talk) 04:14, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * yes that was bad, thanks for pointing that out. i improved it. Jytdog (talk) 00:46, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

What was your objection to my edit?
I don't mind; I'd just like to understand.RussellBell (talk) 06:39, 15 May 2023 (UTC)