08 Jul 2024 --- Amid a growing demand and market for biotics, researchers at the Food Science and Technology department at the University of California (UC) Davis, US, are investigating the chemical building blocks of oligosaccharides — carbohydrates from three to six units of simple sugars — and how they react with bacteria in the human gut microbiome. The building blocks of these compounds significantly impact which bacteria can feed off them. Daniela Barile, a professor and chemist at UC Davis’ food science and technology, tells Nutrition Insight that increased diversity of the building blocks from a chemical point of view “results in increased prebiotic selectivity.”
