Lactic Acid Bacteria Exopolysaccharides Producers: A Sustainable Tool for Functional Foods (original) (raw)

2021, Foods

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) used in the food industry, mainly for the production of dairy products, are able to synthetize exopolysaccharides (EPS). EPS play a central role in the assessment of rheological and sensory characteristics of dairy products since they positively influence texture and organoleptic properties. Besides these, EPS have gained relevant interest for pharmacological and nutraceutical applications due to their biocompatibility, non-toxicity and biodegradability. These bioactive compounds may act as antioxidant, cholesterol-lowering, antimicrobial and prebiotic agents. This review provides an overview of exopolysaccharide-producing LAB, with an insight on the factors affecting EPS production, their dairy industrial applications and health benefits.

Exopolysaccharides of Lactic Acid Bacteria: Production, Purification and Health Benefits towards Functional Food

Nutrients

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are capable of synthesising metabolites known as exopolysaccharides (EPS) during fermentation. Traditionally, EPS plays an important role in fermented dairy products through their gelling and thickening properties, but they can also be beneficial to human health. This bioactivity has gained attention in applications for functional foods, which leads them to have prebiotic, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, anti-tumour, cholesterol-lowering and anti-obesity activity. Understanding the parameters and conditions is crucial to optimising the EPS yields from LAB for applications in the food industry. This review provides an overview of the functional food market together with the biosynthesis of EPS. Factors influencing the production of EPS as well as methods for isolation, characterisation and quantification are reviewed. Finally, the health benefits associated with EPS are discussed.

Health promoting benefits of postbiotics produced by lactic acid bacteria: Exopolysaccharide

Biotech Studies

Exopolysaccharides are high molecular weight polymers of repeated sugar units with diverse chemical structure and unique properties and produced by microorganisms. Lactic acid bacteria are important exopolysaccharide producers. Lactic acid bacteria derived exopolysaccharides, one of the postbiotics, are known to have technological properties such as stabilizing, thickening, emulsifing and also biological activities. Lactic acid bacteria can synthesis exopolysaccharides with large structural variability and this diversity brings these polymers to possess several bioactivities. Bioactivities such as immunomodulatory, antiinflammatory, antitumor and antimutagenicity, antioxidant, antibacterial and antiviral, cholesterol-lowering, antihypertensive activity and gastro-protective activity bring these biopolymers commercial value in the global market and potential to be used in biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Therefore, to evaluate the availability of these natural exopolysacch...

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.