Current understanding and future perspectives on the extraction, structures, and regulation of muscle function of tea pigments

Abstract

With the aggravating aging of modern society, the sarcopenia-based aging syndrome poses a serious potential threat to the health of the elderly. Natural dietary supplements show great potential to reduce muscle wasting and enhance muscle performance. Tea has been widely recognized for its health-promoting effects. which contains active ingredients such as tea polyphenols, tea pigments, tea polysaccharides, theanine, caffeine, and vitamins. In different tea production processes, the oxidative condensation and microbial transformation of catechins and other natural substances from tea promotes the production of various tea pigments, including theaflavins (TFs), thearubigins (TRs), and theabrownins (TBs). Tea pigments have shown a positive effect on maintaining muscle health. Nevertheless, the relationship between tea pigments and skeletal muscle function has not been comprehensively elucidated. In addition, the numerous research on the extraction and purification of tea pigments is disordered with the limited recent progress due to the complexity of species and molecular structure. In this review, we sort out the strategies for the separation of tea pigments, and discuss the structures of tea pigments. On this basis, the regulation mechanisms of tea pigments on muscle functional were emphasized. This review highlights the current understanding on the extraction methods, molecular structures and regulation mechanisms of muscle function of tea pigments. Furthermore, main limitations and future perspectives are proposed to provide new insights into broadening theoretical research and industrial applications of tea pigments in the future.

Highlights

• The extraction and isolation methods of tea pigments are detailedly introduced.

• The structural research progress of tea pigments are summarized.

• The effects of tea pigments in the prevention of muscle diseases are introduced.

• The mechanism of tea pigments in enhancing skeletal muscle function are proposed.

Keywords:

• Extraction methods
• molecular structure
• tea pigments
• regulation mechanisms
• skeletal muscle function

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for financially sponsored by the fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M702140), Shanghai Postdoctoral Excellence Program (2021224), Program of Shanghai Academic/Technology Research Leader (20XD1433500) and Shanghai Agricultural Leading Talent Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32172223).