Wanmeng Mu - Novel enzymes for functional carbohydrates production: From scientific research to application in health food industry

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Carbohydrates are a key form of energy for most organisms. From the point of trendy diets, carbohydrates are divided into good or bad groups. The well-refined carbohydrates with labels of high calories or high glycemic index are considered to be bad. The good carbohydrates are generally called the functional carbohydrates. The term functional carbohydrate is used not only to describe the edible carbohydrates but also to describe the ones with some physical functions other than the energy-supplying function, such as hyaluronic acid and curdlan with special solubilities and rheological properties. In the context of this book, only the carbohydrates with health-promoting effects especially prebiotic actions are referred to as functional carbohydrates. They have more nutritious value than traditional carbohydrates. Several enzymatic methods for the synthesis of such carbohydrates have been discovered and developed in recent decades, which provide a new range of application areas for these novel enzymes.

The research on novel enzymes will remove many of the limitations currently restricting the manufacture of some functional carbohydrates. However, the lack of knowledge of scientific progress in enzyme technology might lead to slow progress of functional carbohydrate production. Therefore, to facilitate tracking the progress in the study of functional carbohydrate-related enzymes, the book will cover 13 chapters including the scientific progresses and recent applications of a selected number of emerging enzymes. The discussion on catalytic mechanism of the enzymes is also covered in this book.

This book addresses the classification of functional carbohydrate-related enzymes and the overall development of food enzymes in Chap. , we summarize the new enzymatic technologies and applications in fructan- and glycan-related industries. We will give an overall perspective on the trends of enzymatic functional carbohydrate production in the last chapter.

As far back as 4000 years ago, the people in China began to use the enzymes in barley malt to make caramel and use fermentation to make wine and make vinegar and sauce. But at that time, people did not intentionally use enzymes. It was a natural behavior, only knowing the results but not knowing the principle. Moreover, the enzymes were mostly used to carry out hydrolysis reactions for debranching and improve solubility and clarity of food ingredients. In 1926, Sumner () first obtained urease crystals that can decompose urea. This research has proved that it is a protein and has all the properties of protein. Afterward, researches on enzymes developed and became an independent discipline. With the development of physics and chemistry, enzymes became powerful technical methods for application. Due to the rapid development of the antibiotic industry stimulated by the Second World War, submerged fermentation was developed and introduced to the enzyme production industry, which can be regarded as a sign of the modernization of the enzyme industry. Enzymology research and application really entered a period of rapid development.

Amylase and glucoamylase are first used industrially to produce glucose and fructose (Souza ). High-fructose syrup is an important sweetener used in the food and beverage industry. Its sweetness is comparable to that of sucrose. It is currently the largest product produced using immobilized enzymes and one of the representatives of high-tech industries applying immobilized enzyme technology. Since then, lipase, lactase, glucose isomerase, glucose oxidase, aminoacylase, rennet, phosphodiesterase, etc. have also begun to be industrially produced. Especially in the late 1950s, the mass production of glucoamylase and the successful application of enzymatic production of glucose replaced the acid hydrolysis process that has been used for hundreds of years and greatly stimulate the development of the enzyme industry, thus becoming the first milestone in the modern enzyme history.