a Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry of Dairy Products , Instituto de Productos Lácteos de Asturias - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IPLA-CSIC) , Villaviciosa , Asturias , Spain.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2016 Jul 3;56(9):1440-53. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2013.770728.
The functional food market, including products formulated to maintain a "healthy" gut microbiota, i.e. probiotics and prebiotics, has increased enormously since the end of the last century. In order to favor the competitiveness of this sector, as well as to increase our knowledge of the mechanisms of action upon human health, new probiotic strains and prebiotic substrates are being studied. This review discusses the use of exopolysaccharides (EPS), both homopolysaccharides (HoPS) and heteropolysaccharides (HePS), synthesized by lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria as potential prebiotics. These extracellular carbohydrate polymers synthesized by some gut inhabitants seem to be resistant to gastrointestinal digestion; these are susceptible as well to biodegradability by the intestinal microbiota depending on both the physicochemical characteristics of EPS and the pool of glycolytic enzymes harbored by microbiota. Therefore, although the chemical composition of these HoPS and HePS is different, both can be fermentable substrates by intestinal inhabitants and good candidates as prebiotic substrates. However, there are limitations for their use as additives in the food industry due to, on the one hand, their low production yield and, on the other hand, a lack of clinical studies demonstrating the functionality of these biopolymers.
自上个世纪末以来，功能性食品市场（包括旨在维持“健康”肠道微生物群的产品，即益生菌和益生元）大幅增长。为了提高该行业的竞争力，以及增加我们对这些益生菌和益生元作用机制的了解，正在研究新的益生菌菌株和益生元底物。本文综述了由乳酸菌和双歧杆菌合成的胞外多糖（EPS），包括同多糖（HoPS）和杂多糖（HePS），作为潜在的益生元的用途。这些由一些肠道居民合成的细胞外碳水化合物聚合物似乎能抵抗胃肠道消化；它们也可能会被肠道微生物群的生物降解，这取决于 EPS 的理化特性和微生物群中糖酵解酶的库。因此，尽管这些 HoPS 和 HePS 的化学成分不同，但它们都可以作为肠道居民的可发酵底物，是很好的益生元底物候选物。然而，由于其生产产量低，并且缺乏临床研究证明这些生物聚合物的功能性，因此它们在食品工业中的应用存在局限性。
