Corroborating the bioactivity of compounds from natural sources and food by-products using foodomics: A deep study at molecular level

Abstract

Safety, quality and bioactivity of foods and food ingredients are investigated in Foodomics through the application and integration of advanced omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and/or metabolomics. The use of these advanced analytical techniques provides information on the action mechanisms at molecular level, which helps to better understand the links among natural sources, food-by-products, food and health. The main goals of Foodomics are to improve consumers' well-being, health and knowledge. In this lecture, we will present the workflow used in our laboratory to scientifically demonstrate the bioactivity of new compounds obtained from natural sources or food by-products. Namely, these Foodomics works were done to determine the anti-proliferative effect of bioactive compounds obtained from herbs, algae or microalgae, olive leaves, etc., using green extraction techniques, against different human cancer cell lines. Whole-transcriptome microarray, proteomics and MS-based non-targeted whole-metabolome approaches were employed to carry out the mentioned studies. The Foodomics strategy enabled the identification of several differentially expressed genes alone and/or linked to changed metabolic pathways that were modulated by food ingredients in cancer cells, providing new evidences at molecular level on the antiproliferative effect of new bioactive compounds.