Abstract
Xanthan is a polysaccharide produced by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris. It is widely used in foods, detergents, cosmetics and so on, to control rheological properties. It is widely accepted that native xanthan forms a double helical structure, and that it loses this structure upon heating (denaturation) and recovers the double helical structure upon cooling its solution (renaturation).1 Products using xanthan are sometimes subjected to heating and cooling processes, such as during cooking. Structural alterations of xanthan induce rheological changes in xanthan solutions, so it is important to characterize the thermally denatured and renatured xanthan for enhanced understanding of the applications of xanthan. However, the structure of renatured xanthan is still under discussion.