Biotechnological production of oligosaccharides: advances and challenges

Abstract

Oligosaccharides are organic chemical compounds formed from 3-10 sugar moieties and are considered as undigestible carbohydrates due to the osidic bonds present in their structure. They are important prebiotics that can be obtained in different ways such as chemical synthesis, mechanical extraction from natural sources or using biotechnological strategies. The biotechnological production of prebiotics has many environmental, economic and industrial advantages with respect to other forms of obtaining of them; the former method provides the opportunity to improve of yields and costs during the process, and offers a degree of simplicity. On the other hand, the interest in functional foods enriched with prebiotics and probiotics in order to improve consumer health has greatly increased. This chapter describes the advances in and challenges of the biotechnological production of oligosaccharides and details the potential for the use of these generally-recognized-as-safe (GRAS) -status compounds in pharmaceutical and food industries.