Analytical determination of Isomaltooligosaccharides mixture known as emerging prebiotics.

Isomaltooligosaccharides (IMOs) are non-digestible oligosaccharides, considered as prebiotics and therefore aim to selectively feed probiotics indigenous to the human colon. Recent data obtained in human subjects, support the involvement of dietary oligosaccharides in physiological processes in the different intestinal cell type and also outside the gastrointestinal tract (e.g. hormone production, lipid and carbohydrate metabolism).
IMOs consists of glucose monomers linked by at least one α-1-6, or in a lower proportion α -1-3 (nigerose family) or α -1-2 (kojibiose family) glucosidic linkages. In our case they are produced enzymatically from corn starch. It results in a very complex mixture with molecules characterized at the same time by their DP value (from 2 to ~20), linkages types (α-1-2, 3 or 6) and the proportion and position of each type of linkage (only α -1-6 or combined types). The challenge of this study was to find a qualitative and quantitative method to characterize the syrups. In a subsequent study, every unidentified peak could be determined by NMR or Mass spectrometry. Three different chromatographic methods have been tested and compared over their selectivity, sensibility, robustness, applicability and their quantitative power.