509040 - FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGIES

First part: Inorganic nutrients: 1) water: physical state of water in foods, water activity (aw), food stability, and mineral waters; 2) minerals: major anions and cations, their food sources. Organic food nutrients: 1) lipids: chemical structures, lipids in foods, lipid degradations, antioxidants; 2) carbohydrates: chemical structures, simple and complex sugars in foods, sweeteners, soluble and insoluble dietary fibers; 3) proteins: aminoacids, structure and function of proteins in foods, biological and nutritional value of animal and vegetable proteins, antinutritional factors; 4) fat- and water-soluble vitamins: physico-chemical properties, distribution in foods. 5) Food additives and relative regulation 6) preservation technologies based on heat, refrigeration and water elimination. Second part. Introduction on food biotechnologies: the key role of microorganisms and plants. Biotechnologies “From Farm to Fork”. Utilization of microorganisms in food industry. Fermentations for food transformation: dairy products, bread. Biotechnological utilization of Lactic Acid Bacteria. Fermentations for microbial enzyme production, utilization in food industry. Biotechnological approaches related to gut microbiota and probiotics. The role of plants in nutrition, plant biotechnology related to nutritional improvement of crops, biofortification, reduction of antinutritional compounds, secondary metabolism. Technologies for improving crop nutritional quality: agronomic techniques and plant breeding, marker-assisted selection, genome wide association studies, genetic transformation and genome editing. Legislation about GMO- and new genomic technologies-derived crops. Plant as bioreactors: in vitro culture techniques, production of secondary metabolites, plant-made pharmaceutical. Case study: the issue of the presence of acrylamide in foods; biotechnological approaches to reduce free asparagine content in wheat derivatives. New food sources from insects, algae, jellyfish, cyanobacteria, terrestrial and aquatic plants. Legislation about novel food. Biotechnology in food analysis: purposes, legislation, differences between qualitative and quantitative analyses. Food analysis techniques: DNA-based methods, proteomics and metabolomics.