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Fucosylated oligosaccharides play important physiological roles in humans, including in the immune response, transduction of signals, early embryogenesis and development, growth regulation, apoptosis, pathogen adhesion, and so on. Efforts have been made to synthesize fucosylated oligosaccharides, as it is difficult to purify them from their natural sources, such as human milk, epithelial tissue, blood, and so on. Within the strategies for its in vitro synthesis, it is remarkable the employment of fucosidases, enzymes that normally cleave the fucosyl residue from the non‐reducing end of fucosylated compounds, as these enzymes are also capable of synthesizing them by means of a transfucosylation reaction. This review summarizes the progress in the use of fucosidases for the synthesis of compounds that have potential for industrial and commercial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fucosyl-oligosaccharides are natural prebiotics that promote the growth of probiotics in human gut and stimulate the innate immune system. In this work, the release of α-lfucosidase by Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, and the use of this enzyme for the synthesis of fucosyl-oligosaccharides were investigated. Since α-lfucosidase is a membrane-bound enzyme, its release from the cells was induced by addition of 4-nitrophenyl-α-l-fucopyranoside (pNP-Fuc). Enzyme activity associated with the cell was recovered at 78% of its total activity. Fucosyl-oligosaccharides where synthesized using α-l-fucosidase extract and pNP-Fuc as donor substrate, and D-lactose or D-lactulose as acceptor substrates, reaching a yield up to 25%. Fucosyllactose was obtained as a reaction product with D-lactose, and its composition was confirmed by mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). It is possible that the fucosyl-oligosaccharide synthesized in this study has biological functions similar to human milk oligosaccharides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]