Oligosaccharide probiotics
The most favoured molecules as prebiotics in animal and human nutrition are the oligosaccharide molecules produced from a number of sources. These include manan- oligosaccharide, fructo- oligosaccharide, chitosan oligosaccharide, transgolacto- oligosaccharide and inulin, all of these have been used in livestock nutrition programmes. Some of them also have been researched widely to demonstrate their physiological actions and their ability to deliver some of the targets mentioned above. A relatively novel oligosaccharide has been developed recently in China by a branch of the China Academy of Science at the Dalian Institute of Chemical physics. This is an oligosaccharide structure derived from shrimp shells and the attached chemical moiety is a chitin molecule. The so-called COS