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. 2017 Sep 19;8:1159. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.01159

Figure 7.

Figure 7

Chemical structure of inulin and fructooligosaccharides. (A) Inulins are naturally occurring indigestible polysaccharides belonging to the class of dietary fibers. Inulin from the blue Agave (Agave tequilana) is composed of linear and branched fructose chains that are connected via β-2,1 and β-2,6 linkages to each other with a total degree of polymerization between 25 and 34. The depicted structure was constituted with Jmol (version 14.2.15_2015.07.09) using the PubChem CID file 24763 deposited in the PubChem Compound Database. (B) Fructoligosaccharides contain a variable number of β-D-fructofuranosyl units with one glucosyl unit. (C) Representative fructooligosaccharides (FOS) are kestose (GF2), nystose (GF3), fructosylnystose (GF4) differing in number of fructose residues. The general molecular formula of a FOS is C6(n+1)H10(n+1)+2O5(n+1)+1 giving rise to a molecular mass of (n + 1) × 180.156 − n × 18.015 g/mol when n is the total number fructose residues.