Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Plant protein stabilized emulsions have attracted great interest in food, personal care and pharmaceutic industries and can be used to encapsulate bioactive molecules (e.g. vitamins and antioxidants) to create novel functional foods. Recent interest has been focused on control of emulsion oxidation and digestion. Oxidation control is important because the lipid oxidation is a major cause of emulsion quality deterioration. By slowing or prolonging lipid digestion, satiety hormones are stimulated to reduce hunger. Thus digestion control may provide new strategy to control calorie intake and ultimately modify serum lipid levels. Such research is also critical for developing delivery systems that can protect bioactive molecules against oxidation and with sustained release in the gut for improved bioavailability.

The long-term goal of my program is to continuously expand our basic understanding of plant protein structure-function relationships and apply these to develop new food and non-food applications. The short-term goal focuses on interfacial molecular mechanisms underlying lipid oxidation and digestion in plant protein stabilized emulsions as the interfacial protein network has a large impact on the rate of lipid oxidation and digestion in emulsions.
The specific objectives in the next five years are to:
1. Study how protein basic structures in combination with environmental factors impact plant protein assemble at the interface
2. Study the synergistic effect of protein-polysaccharide complexation on interfacial network properties
3. Study how interfacial network characteristics impact lipid oxidation and digestion in emulsion systems
4. Design novel emulsion delivery systems for improved nutraceutical stability and bioavailability.

The knowledge gained from this research will allow us to engineer interfacial networks with desired functionalities at the molecular level, and then tailor these into novel emulsion foods with a prolonged shelf-life, improved nutritive value and controlled calorie intake. Future collaboration with industry will lead to novel functional foods to lower the risk of chronic disease and improve public health. This research will be readily transferred to pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, since they are demanding for natural, non-GMO, and less-allergenic materials of plant origin. Such a vast and timely opportunity will enhance the profitability and sustainability of Canadian crop producers and processors.