Isolation and characterization of antimicrobial food components

Artificial Intelligence in Functional Food Ingredient Discovery and Characterisation: A Focus on Bioactive Plant and Food Peptides

Scientific research consistently demonstrates that diseases may be delayed, treated, or even prevented and, thereby, health may be maintained with health-promoting functional food ingredients (FFIs). Consumers are increasingly demanding sound information about food, nutrition, nutrients, and their associated health benefits. Consequently, a nutrition industry is being formed around natural foods and FFIs, the economic growth of which is increasingly driven by consumer decisions. Information technology, in particular artificial intelligence (AI), is primed to vastly expand the pool of characterised and annotated FFIs available to consumers, by systematically discovering and characterising natural, efficacious, and safe bioactive ingredients (bioactives) that address specific health needs. However, FFI-producing companies are lagging in adopting AI technology for their ingredient development pipelines for several reasons, resulting in a lack of efficient means for large-scale and high-throughput molecular and functional ingredient characterisation. The arrival of the AI-led technological revolution allows for the comprehensive characterisation and understanding of the universe of FFI molecules, enabling the mining of the food and natural product space in an unprecedented manner. In turn, this expansion of bioactives dramatically increases the repertoire of FFIs available to the consumer, ultimately resulting in bioactives being specifically developed to target unmet health needs.

Antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of ethanolic extracts of guarana, boldo, rosemary and cinnamon

Abstract In this investigation, the ethanolic extracts of two less known plants, little reported in the literature (guarana and boldo leaves) were studied in comparison with the ethanolic extracts of two well studied plants (cinnamon and rosemary), regarding their colour, GC-MS profile, phenolic content and their antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. The rosemary (59.20 ± 0.28) and guarana (56.63 ± 0.54) extracts showed the highest values for luminosity (L*) and the UV-Vis absorption increased when L* decreased. GC-MS identified a limited number of compounds in the cinnamon and guarana extracts. The cinnamon extract showed the highest value for the total phenolic content (172 mg GA/g extract) as compared to the other extracts. The highest antioxidant capacity was observed for the boldo leaves extract in the TEAC (6.66 ± 0.17 mM) assay and for the rosemary extract in the DPPH (0.80 ± 0.14 mg/L) test. In addition, all the extracts showed antimicrobial activity against the S. aureus strain, indicating that all the extracts studied could be used by food industries to develop new active food packaging materials.

Combating Antimicrobial Resistance in Foodborne Microorganisms

This review addresses an important public health hazard affecting food safety. Antimicrobial agents are used in foods to reduce or eliminate microorganisms that cause disease. Many traditional organic compounds, novel synthetic organic agents, natural products, peptides, and proteins have been extensively studied for their effectiveness as antimicrobial agents against foodborne Campylobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Listeria spp. and Salmonella. However, antimicrobial resistance can develop in microorganisms, enhancing their ability to withstand the inhibiting or killing action of antimicrobial agents. Knowledge gaps still exist with regard to the actual chemical and microbiological mechanisms that must be identified to facilitate the search for new antimicrobial agents. Technical implementation of antimicrobial active packing films and coatings against target microorganisms must also be improved for extended product shelf life. Recent advances in antimicrobial susceptibility testing can provide researchers with new momentum to pursue their quest for a resistance panacea.