Xylooligosaccharides Production, Quantification, and Characterization in Context of Lignocellulosic Biomass Pretreatment

Oligosaccharides, also termed sugar oligomers, refer to short-chain polymers of monosaccharide units connected by a and/or b glycosidic bonds. In structure, oligosaccharides represent a class of carbohydrates between polysaccharides and monosaccharides, but the range of degree of polymerization (DP, chain length) spanned by oligosaccharides has not been consistently defined. For example, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) database of the US National Library of Medicine defines oligosaccharides as carbohydrates consisting of 2–10 monosaccharide units; in other literature, sugar polymers with DPs of up to 30–40 have been included as oligosaccharides [1–3].