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Instead, “to my surprise, it's very rich in mannan, a type of polysaccharide common in plants, but nowhere near the quantity present in acai,” she says.

While certain types of wood have up to 15 percent of mannan, this carbohydrate molecule is responsible for 50 percent of an acai seed’s weight.

Silva’s research developed ways to break down mannan into mannose, a valuable sugar with potential applications in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and food industries.

Silva’s group has obtained a patent from the Brazilian government to convert mannan into mannose and to make it into a prebiotic called mannan oligosaccharide.

Testing the adjuvants against other bacteria and tweaking the recipe as they went, the researchers landed on another combo—aluminum hydroxide, monophosphoryl lipid A, and a fungal compound called mannan—that provided even better protection and worked against more hospital-associated microbes.