Exopolysaccharides synthesized by lactic acid bacteria: biosynthesis pathway, structure-function relationship, structural modification and applicability

Abstract

Probiotics and their fermentation products are increasingly been focused on due to their health-boosting effects. Exopolysaccharides (EPS) synthetized by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are widely applied as texture modifiers in dairy, meat and bakery products owning to their improved properties. Moreover, LAB-derived EPS have been confirmed to possess diverse physiological bioactivities including antioxidant, anti-biofilm, antiviral, immune-regulatory or antitumor. However, the low production and high acquisition cost hinder their development. Even though LAB-derived EPS have been extensively studied for their production-improving, there are only few reports on the systematic elucidation and summary of the relationship among biosynthesis pathway, strain selection, production parameter, structure-function relationship. Therefore, a detailed summary on biosynthesis pathway, production parameter and structure-function relationship of LAB-derived EPS is provided in this review, the structural modifications together with the current and potential applications are also discussed in this paper.

Keywords:

• Application
• biosynthesis
• exopolysaccharides
• lactic acid bacteria
• modification
• structure-function relationship

Authors’ contributions

Jinsong Wu engaged in literature summary and manuscript writing. Xiangpeng Han and Meizhi Ye performed in collecting and analyzing the data, drawing figures. Xi Wang and Yao Li conducted in drawing tables and editing languages. Qingping Zhong critically analyzed the data and revised the entire manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31972046), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2021A1515011083), National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC1601203), and Science and Technology Projects of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2020B1212060059).