Publications

The valorization of by‐products is currently a matter of great concern to improve the sustainability of the food industry. High quality by‐products derived from the food chain are omega‐3 fatty acids, being fish the main source of docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid. The search for economic and sustainable sources following the standards of circular economy had led to search for strategies that put in value new resources to obtain different omega‐3 fatty acids, which could be further employed in the development of new industrial products without producing more wastes and economic losses. In this sense, seeds and vegetables, fruits and crustaceans by products can be an alternative. This review encompasses all these aspects on omega‐3 fatty acids profile from marine and agri‐food by‐products together with their extraction and purification technologies are reported. These comprise conventional techniques like extraction with solvents, cold press, and wet pressing and, more recently proposed ones like, supercritical fluids fractionation and purification by chromatographic methods. The information collected indicates a trend to combine different conventional and emerging technologies to improve product yields and purity. This paper also addresses encapsulation strategies for their integration in novel foods to achieve maximum consumer acceptance and to ensure their effectiveness.

The antimicrobial activity of plants, algae, and derived extracts has been a subject of interest for the scientific community. Algae extracts have demonstrated their potential as a source of natural antimicrobial agents. Because of their antibacterial capacity and low toxicity, algae extracts have been studied as natural preservatives in food and cosmetic formulations. The use of these extracts has the potential to minimize the use of synthetic preservatives, which may be harmful to both human health and the environment. Nonetheless, the use of end-point techniques to calculate the minimal inhibitory concentration instead of creating growth inhibition curves usually leads to an absence of mathematical modeling procedures on the bacterial inhibition behavior of natural extracts. The goal of mathematical modeling is to describe the relationship between the concentration of an inhibitory agent (such as a drug or a toxin) and the growth rate of a population. For this purpose, the data obtained during the growth of six different bacteria in the presence of different concentrations of Ascophyllum nodosum (L.) extracts were recorded over 24 h. Later, the collected data were modeled based on different classical sigmoidal models, e.g., Weibull, logistic, and Gompertz, that were applied to define the critical growth phases and infer the kinetic parameters. The obtained parameters led to the conclusion that the inhibition mechanisms behind the antibacterial effects of the algae extracts are diverse towards different microorganisms. The presence of the extract led to a diminution of the specific growth velocity in some cases such as Staphylococcus epidermidis while in the replication of other bacteria such as Bacillus cereus, the extension of the lag phase was the predominant inhibition mechanism.

Abstract Coriandrum sativum (coriander) is an edible herb in the family Apiaceae. The leaves, fruits, and stems of C. sativum have long been used as culinary spice due to their favorable odor. Traditional practitioners used this plant for treating different diseases like blepharitis, scabies, aphthous stomatitis, laryngitis, headache, and palpitation. In modern researches, coriander has demonstrated anxiolytic, anticonvulsant, antimigraine, neuroprotective, analgesic, diuretic, hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, hypotensive, anticancer, and antioxidant activities. Coriander contains a wide range of bioactive phytochemicals among which phenylpropenes, terpenoids, isocoumarins, phytosterols, and fatty acids are the most important. This review provides information about the botanical and ethnobotanical aspects, chemical profile, therapeutic uses in Islamic traditional medicine (ITM), and recent pharmacological studies of coriander effects. The results have shown that coriander and its monoterpenoid compound, linalool, can be considered as potential drug candidates for treating metabolic syndrome and different inflammatory conditions especially neural and CNS diseases.

Phenol and some of its derivatives are products of the petrochemical industry. These compounds are characterized by their exceptional ability to persist in media and reach both food and water used by human beings. The consumption of these compounds has harmful effects on health, producing both acute and chronic effects—among the most prominent damages are teratogenicity, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. Compounds such as phenol, ortho-cresol, and 1-napthol are listed by agencies such as the EPA. The aim of this work was the development of a rapid method for the simultaneous detection of these compounds in water samples. The method was based on the colorimetric reaction between phenol derivatives and Gibbs reagent, which forms indophenolates; using increased surface Raman spectroscopy together with statistical methods, SERS spectra were acquired, which were then analyzed. The developed method allows one to at least equalize the detection limits of the colorimetric method through UV–VIS spectroscopy and to discriminate among the three mixed phenols in at least binary aqueous samples. The major advantage of the method is the possibility of discriminating between phenol spectra quickly and easily.

During recent decades, consumers have been continuously moving towards the substitution of synthetic ingredients of the food industry by natural products, obtained from vegetal, animal or microbial sources. Additionally, a circular economy has been proposed as the most efficient production system since it allows for reducing and reutilizing different wastes. Current agriculture is responsible for producing high quantities of organic agricultural waste (e.g., discarded fruits and vegetables, peels, leaves, seeds or forestall residues), that usually ends up underutilized and accumulated, causing environmental problems. Interestingly, these agri-food by-products are potential sources of valuable bioactive molecules such as tannins. Tannins are phenolic compounds, secondary metabolites of plants widespread in terrestrial and aquatic natural environments. As they can be found in plenty of plants and herbs, they have been traditionally used for medicinal and other purposes, such as the leather industry. This fact is explained by the fact that they exert plenty of different biological activities and, thus, they entail a great potential to be used in the food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, this review article is directed towards the description of the biological activities exerted by tannins as they could be further extracted from by-products of the agri-food industry to produce high-added-value products.

Related publication: García-Lojo, D; Méndez-Merino, D; Pérez-Juste, I; Acuña, A; García-Río, L; Rodríguez-Patón, A; Pastoriza-Santos, I; Pérez-Juste, J. Bolaform surfactant-induced Au nanoparticle assemblies for reliable solution-based SERS detection. Adv.Mater. Technol. 2022, 2101726. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202101726 Abstract: Solution-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) detection typically involves the aggregation of citrate-stabilized Au nanoparticles into colloidal assemblies. Although this sensing methodology offers excellent prospects for sensitivity, portability, and speed, it is still challenging to control the assembly process by a salting-out effect, which affects the reproducibility of the assemblies and, therefore, the reliability of the analysis. This work presents an alternative approach that uses a bolaform surfactant, B20, to induce the plasmonic assembly. The decrease of the surface charge and the bridging effect, both promoted by the adsorption of B20, are hypothesized as the key points governing the assembly. Furthermore, molecular dynamic simulations supported the bridging effect of the B20 by showing the preferential bridging of surfactant monomers between two adjacent Au(111) slabs. The colloidal assemblies showed excellent SERS capabilities towards the rapid, on-site detection and quantification of beta-blockers and analgesic drugs in the nanomolar regime, with a portable Raman device. Interestingly, the application of state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks, such as ResNet, allows a 100% accuracy in classifying the concentration of different binary mixtures. Finally, the colloidal approach was successfully implemented in a millifluidic chip allowing the automation of the whole process, as well as improving the performance of the sensor in terms of speed, reliability, and reusability without affecting its sensitivity.

Vitellogenin (Vtg), a large multidomain protein precursor of egg-yolk proteins, is used as an endocrine disruption biomarker in fish, and in the last decades, its use has been extended to invertebrates like mollusks. However, it remains unclear whether invertebrate endocrine system produces Vtg in response to estrogens, like it occurs in oviparous vertebrates. In a previous study, no evidence of induction of Vtg expression at protein level was found in gonads of the marine mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis after exposure to the estrogenic chemical 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2). In the present follow-up study, it was investigated whether there is any effect of EE2 on Vtg abundance at transcriptional level in M. galloprovincialis gonads. To this aim, RT-qPCR analysis targeting three different domains of Vtg transcript was performed on gonads of mussels that were exposed either 4 or 24 days to 100 ng/L EE2. In addition, several reference genes were analysed and a selection of these for potential use in further RT-qPCR analyses on mussel male and female gonads is provided. Results showed higher expression in females than in males for the three analysed Vtg domains, and no evidence of Vtg mRNA induction due to EE2 either in females or males. The present results, together with those obtained from previous analysis at protein level, support that Vtg is not an adequate biomarker for xenoestrogenicity in marine mussels. Additionally, nucleotide sequences of Vtg transcripts of three closely-related species from Mytilus edulis complex (M. galloprovincialis, M. edulis and M. trossulus) are provided and compared with Vtg sequences from other mollusk species to assess the level of conservation and evolutionary relationships among species.