Many anti-obesity chemicals have been withdrawn from the market due to serious adverse reactions, and the researchers have turned their attention to low-toxic natural products. Previous studies have demonstrated that chitosan (CTS) and chitosan oligosaccharide (COS) were low-toxic natural products for the use of weight loss. However, it is still unclear whether CTS and COS have positive effects on the thermogenesis. In this study, CTS and COS significantly reduced the weight gain of rats without affecting food intake and effectively inhibited adipose tissue hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Consistently, CTS and COS significantly increased the thermogenic capacity of obese rats induced by high-fat diet (HFD) and increased the expression of browning genes and proteins (UCP1, PGC1α, PRMD16, and ATF2) in white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT). In vitro, COS inhibited the formation of mature adipocytes and increased the expression of browning genes. In conclusion, COS and CTS was used to explore the function and mechanism on thermogenesis, and CTS and COS can increase the browning of WAT and the thermogenesis of BAT to inhibit obesity. This effect may be achieved by promoting the expression of browning and thermogenic genes, providing new ideas for the utilization of COS and CTS.

To explore the role of Galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) in preventing constipation and promoting excretion of feces. The high, medium and low doses of GOS-1000-S (8.8g/kg, 4.4g/kg, 2.2g/kg) were administered orally to constipation mice for 7 days, and then we measured the propulsive rate of intestines, first defecation time, the number of feces particle and fecal weight in 5 hours. The results showed that GOS-1000-S can significantly promote the small bowel propulsion, shorten the first defecation time and increase the fecal weight number of fecal particle of constipation mice. These indicate that GOS has the effect of relieving constipation and defecating feces excretion. This study provided a basis for the development of GOS with constipation-relieving functions as a health supplement.