Discovery and Establishing Health-Beneficial Effects of Bioactive Compounds in Food

Dear Colleagues,

Foods are complicated materials that contain nutrient substances and functional/bioactive compounds, for instance, flavones, pigments, polyphenols, polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, antioxidants, and enzymes. Foods could produce tons of bioactive compounds during digestion, and all these functional/bioactive compounds play critical roles in human health, even in some diseases. Therefore, the efficient discovery of such functional/bioactive compounds becomes significant, especially high-throughput discovery or screening. Because of the rapid development of information science and technology and omics (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, flavor omics, etc.), high-throughput techniques and virtual prediction technology greatly promote the efficient discovery and innovation of functional/bioactive compounds in foods. In addition, the establishment of the health effects of these bioactive compounds in food are active areas of scientific inquiry. There are exciting prospects that some bioactive compounds will reduce the risk of many diseases, including chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Recent findings have established that cardiovascular disease is a disease of inflammation, and consequently is amenable to intervention via molecules that have anti-inflammatory effects.

Thus, the present Special Issue will focus on discovery and establishing health-beneficial effects of bioactive compounds in food in terms of new techniques for the screening, prediction, and design of functional/bioactive compounds in foods through high-throughput methods, virtual strategies, etc., as well as the establishment of novel techniques in the methodologies of bioactivities in vitro or in vivo and the illustration of the molecular mechanism to increase our understanding of the biology of bioactive compounds. The discovery of novel health effects of bioactive compounds will provide a scientific basis for future efforts to use biotechnology to modify or fortify foods and their components as a means to improve public health.

Prof. Dr. Yingjian Lu
Prof. Dr. Xiaojun Liao
Prof. Dr. Jing Wang
Prof. Dr. Zhaoxin Lu
Guest Editors

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