Abstract
A growing demand in novel food products for well-being and preventative medicine has attracted global attention on nutraceutical prebiotics. Various plant agro-processes produce large amounts of residual biomass considered “wastes”, which can potentially be used to produce nutraceutical prebiotics, such as manno-oligosaccharides (MOS). MOS can be produced from the degradation of mannan. Mannan has a main backbone consisting of β-1,4-linked mannose residues (which may be interspersed by glucose residues) with galactose substituents. Endo-β-1,4-mannanases cleave the mannan backbone at cleavage sites determined by the substitution pattern and thus give rise to different MOS products. These MOS products serve as prebiotics to stimulate various types of intestinal bacteria and cause them to produce fermentation products in different parts of the gastrointestinal tract which benefit the host. This article reviews recent advances in understanding the exploitation of plant residual biomass via the enzymatic production and characterization of MOS, and the influence of MOS on beneficial gut microbiota and their biological effects (i.e., immune modulation and lipidemic effects) as observed on human and animal health.
Highlights
The utilization of MOS by beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus sp. and Bifidobacteria sp. results in the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and lactic acid (LA), which results in the decrease of the pH in the intestine preventing the attachment of pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens to the intestinal mucosa [39,95]
This review highlights recent advances made in enzyme technology for the production of prebiotic MOS from mannan-containing lignocellulosic wastes generated from various agro-processes applied in the African agricultural sector
The structural diversity of mannanase produced MOS depends on the type of substrate, pretreatment and structure/function of the mannanase utilized
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Fostering the growth of these microbial species in humans is crucial in disease prevention and therapy. Hemicellulose-derived prebiotic oligosaccharides are able to selectively stimulate or inhibit the growth of specific microbial individual species, and this makes them ideal for applications in microbiotalinked disease prevention and therapy [12]. Prebiotics are non-digestible food components that selectively stimulate the growth or activity of specific indigenous bacteria (probiotics), such as lactobacilli and Bifidobacterium and non-pathogenic yeast, Saccharomyces boulardii, while inhibiting the growth of toxin-producing bacteria, such as Streptococcus pneumonia, proteolytic Clostridia and Escherichia coli, in the digestive tract, in a manner claimed to be beneficial for the host [12,13,14]. Prebiotics are primarily carbohydrates (oligosaccharides and polysaccharides) in nature, with oligosaccharides included in this category being fructooligosaccharides (FOS), xylooligosaccharides (XOS), galactooligosaccharides (GOS), mannooligosaccharides (MOS) and pectin oligosaccharides (POS), as well as some sugar alcohols [15,16]
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