Foodomics and Food Safety: Where We Are
Abstract
The power of foodomics as a discipline that is now broadly used for quality assurance of food products and adulteration identifi cation, as well as for determining the safety of food, is presented. Concerning sample preparation and application, maintenance of highly sophisticated instruments for both high-performance and high-throughput techniques, and analysis and data interpretation, special att ention has to be paid to the development of skilled analysts. The obtained data shall be integrated under a strong bioinformatics environment. Modern mass spectrometry is an extremely powerful analytical tool since it can provide direct qualitative and quantitative information about a molecule of interest from only a minute amount of sample. Quality of this information is infl uenced by the sample preparation procedure, the type of mass spectrometer used and the analyst's skills. Technical advances are bringing new instruments of increased sensitivity, resolution and speed to the market. Othe...r methods presented here give additional information and can be used as complementary tools to mass spectrometry or for validation of obtained results. Genomics and transcriptomics, as well as affi nity-based methods, still have a broad use in food analysis. Serious drawbacks of some of them, especially the affi nity-based methods, are the cross-reactivity between similar molecules and the infl uence of complex food matrices. However, these techniques can be used for pre-screening in order to reduce the large number of samples. Great progress has been made in the application of bioinformatics in foodomics. These developments enabled processing of large amounts of generated data for both identifi cation and quantifi cation, and for corresponding modeling.
Keywords:
foodomics / food safety / foodborne pathogens / sample preparation / analytical technologiesSource:
Food Technology and Biotechnology, 2017, 55, 3, 290-307Publisher:
- University of Zagreb
Projects:
- bilateral scientific project - Ministries of Sciences of Croatia and Serbia
- Production, purification and characterization of enzymes and small molecules and their application as soluble or immobilized in food biotechnology, biofuels production and environmental protection (RS-172048)
DOI: 10.17113/ftb.55.03.17.5044
ISSN: 1330-9862
PubMed: 29089845