Abstract
Microbial extracellular polysaccharides (EPS), produced by a wide range of bacteria, are high molecular weight biopolymers, presenting an extreme diversity in terms of chemical structure and composition. They may be used in many applications, depending on their chemical and physical properties. A rather unexplored aspect is the presence of rare sugars in the composition of some EPS. Rare sugars, such as rhamnose or fucose, may provide EPS with additional biological properties compared to those composed of more common sugar monomers. This review gives a brief overview of these specific EPS and their producing bacteria. Cultivation conditions are summarized, demonstrating their impact on the EPS composition, together with downstream processing. Finally, their use in different areas, including cosmetics, food products, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical applications, are discussed.
Highlights
Bacterial extracellular polysaccharides (EPS) presenting a wide range of physicochemical properties have emerged as promising polymers for many commercial applications in different industrial sectors like food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, oil drilling, and paper manufacturing (Kumar and Mody, 2009; Freitas et al, 2011a)
A fucose containing EPS, has been used extensively in skin care cosmetic formulations (Bauer et al, 2012; Tecco and Sanders, 2012). This fact is mainly due to its moisturizing properties and to the scientific evidence of the action of fucogel and fucogel oligosaccharides as skin anti-aging agents, namely for stimulation of fibroblast proliferation and survival (Péterszegi et al, 2003a)
A minority of microbial EPS are today used as commodity products mostly because of their production and purification costs
Summary
Bacterial extracellular polysaccharides (EPS) presenting a wide range of physicochemical properties have emerged as promising polymers for many commercial applications in different industrial sectors like food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, oil drilling, and paper manufacturing (Kumar and Mody, 2009; Freitas et al, 2011a) Despite this potential, bacterial EPS currently represent a very small fraction of the global polymer market, mostly because of their production costs. Some of them might be produced biochemically by the use of specialized enzymes belonging usually to the classes of keto–aldol isomerases, epimerases, and oxidoreductases using glucose as main precursor (Granström et al, 2004; Beerens et al, 2012) Their scarceness makes them highly valuable and, bacterial EPS containing rare sugars represent an interesting source for their isolation and production. Polysaccharides containing rare sugars are found in plants, seaweeds, and animals, microbial production of such polymers is advantageous for several reasons, namely, production is
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