On March 30th, 2023, an international group of authors from around the world, including three scientists connected to IMCB, published an extensive book, titled "The Book of Fructans" The book contains over 300 pages of comprehensive information.
The book covers a wide range of topics related to fructans, from their natural occurrence and naming to their applications in medicine and the bioeconomy. Although the book's compilation began in 2020, it contains up-to-date information, with the latest references to scientific articles published in 2022 and 2023. There are 37 contributors to the book, including scientists from 17 countries around the world.
IMCB scientists contributed to writing the Chapter 4, which provides information on enzymes that produce and degrade fructans. This chapter is one of the most extensive in the book, and the IMCB-connected authors, including Docent Emeritus Tiina Alamäe, Associate Professor in Microbiology Triinu Visnapuu, and Karin Ernits, a former TÜMRI doctoral graduate who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University, made significant contributions to its compilation.
Although there is a vast amount of information available on glycans, there is very little information available on fructans, including their applied aspects. The most well-known fructan, which has been studied the most and has already applications ranging from the food industry to skincare products, is inulin.
Chapter IV covers fructans in all domains of life. Microbial fructans have been much less studied than others, and for example, archaea enzymes were only recently discovered to contain them. The chapter's authors include the ´book's editor, Prof. Wim Van den Ende, who wrote about fructans derived from plants, and Prof. Lazaro Hernandez, a Cuban scientist.
The newly published book allows readers to expand their knowledge of fructans and contributes to the future expansion of their applications. The book is published by Elsevier and is edited by Professors Wim Van den Ende (Belgium) and Ebru Toksoy Öner (Turkey), the latter of whom served as the opponent for Karin Ernits' doctoral thesis at IMCB in 2019.
The header image features the editors of "The Book of Fructans" and the IMCB-connected authors in 2019 at the Omicum building of the University of Tartu.