Physiological and Processing Effects on Food Derived Bioactive Compounds
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 2682
Special Issue Editors
Interests: food recycling; plant enzyme inhibitors; protein structure and function; recombinant proteins; seed germination; seed storage proteins
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: food bioactive; in vitro digestion; cell culture; polyunsaturated fatty acids; nutrient bioaccessibility and bioavailability
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Besides being merely a source of nutrients, foods contain molecules that possess interesting characteristics for various application fields. Also, food by-products often retain significative amounts of molecules that can be addressed to both nutritional and other uses. Currently, there is a wide and still increasing knowledge on the bioactivities of food derived compounds, that span from anti-inflammatory, antioxidant or anti-microbial to anti-carcinogenic and anti-hypertensive, just to cite few of these. To exert their potential however such compounds must reach their cellular/molecular targets.
Prior to reaching their molecular target indeed, such molecules face several transformations. Firstly, when food raw materials are processed through the physical, thermal and chemical transformations leading to the consumed product, secondly, after the ingestion, when the physiological events that finally lead to the digestion and bioactive compounds absorption enter the game. Although a huge number of works describe in vitro activities of food derived bioactive compounds, there is still a limited information on how these compounds interact with the food matrices during transformation processes, how they behave during digestion and how they interact with the gastrointestinal environment, where absorption occur.
In the last decades, the effects of food on health as well as the effects of processing on food have been deeply investigated by biochemists, nutritionist, and food technologists, often evaluating food in terms of quality and quantity of components without considering the supramolecular organization. The supramolecular organization, often referred to as the “matrix effect,” indicates the nature of aggregation or the compartmentalization of the heterogeneous mixtures of components constituting foods. The supramolecular organization can deeply affect the release of molecules from food during digestion (bioaccessibility), their absorption (bioavailability), and then utilization for physiological functions in target tissue (bioactivity).
The aim of this Special Issue is to attract original research paper and review articles, illustrating the current findings on the effect of innovative food processing on bioaccessibility, bioavailability and bioactivity of food bioactive compounds. We invite authors to submit articles that clarify several aspects of the complex relationship among food bioactive compounds and their synergism, food matrix, processing, and health.
Prof. Dr. Alessio Scarafoni
Dr. Mattia Di Nunzio
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- matrix effects
- bioactive compounds
- in vitro digestion
- bioaccessibility
- bioavailability
- bioactivity
- foodomics
- food processing effects
- agri-food by-products valorization
