Novel enzymes for functional carbohydrates production

Book excerpt: This book focuses on the latest research and new techniques in the field of functional carbohydrate-related enzymes. Carbohydrates are a key form of energy for most organisms. The “good” carbohydrates generally refer to functional carbohydrates. In addition to the low or moderate energy-supplying function, they have more nutritious value than traditional carbohydrates and some of them also have health-promoting effects especially prebiotic actions. Several enzymatic methods for the synthesis of such carbohydrates have been discovered and developed in the recent decades, providing a new range of application areas for these novel enzymes. This book addresses the classification of functional carbohydrate-related enzymes and the overall development in food enzyme in Chapter 1. Chapters 2-5 describe the isomerases or epimerases involved in the production of rare sugars, such as D-allulose, D-mannose, D-tagatose, and D-allose. While the studies of the enzymes related to fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) and galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) dominate the scientific literature in the field of enzymatic production of health-functional oligosaccharides, some enzymes also show promise for the emerging oligosaccharide production, which are introduced in Chapters 6-8. Chapters 9-12 summarize the new enzymatic technologies and applications in fructan- and glycan-related industries. The last Chapter gives an overall prospective on the trends of enzymatic functional carbohydrate production. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students in the fields of biotechnology, enzyme engineering, and carbohydrate production, as well as the health industry.