Answer to Question #27430 in Molecular Biology for Faariah

Question

Is Inulin homopolymer or heteropolymer?

Answer 1

Inulin is the naturally occurring polysaccharide, it’s a polymer, composed mainly of fructose units, and it can have a terminal glucose units.
Polymer that contains only a single type of repeat unit is known as homopolymer, while polymer containing a mixture of repeat units is known as heteropolymer or copolymer. So, Inulin, which contains terminal glucose units is a heteropolymer, and Inulin which has no terminal glucose units is a homopolymer.
But, in general it can be considered that Inulin is a fructose homopolymer, because it contains several thousand of fructose units and just in some cases only a few terminal glucose units.