Exploring the OMICS Platforms in Food Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Since antiquity, scientists have been concerned with food and nutrition issues, being the most significant discoveries from the late 1700s. Prominent scientists, including Antoine Lavoisier, Gay-Lussac, and Jacob Berzelius, studied foods intensively and made discoveries of fundamental importance to food chemistry. Impressive developments in different fields changed the food analysis paradigm, which has moved from classical methodologies to advanced technologies that have been well established.

Currently, research in food science and nutrition is boosted thanks to the great potential offered by foodomics in unraveling the vast complexities of food metabolomes at the genetic and molecular levels, through the employment of advanced OMICS tools, namely metabolomics, lipidomics, proteomics and genomics.

Assuming an increasing centrality on the systematic establishment of metabolomes, volatomes, lipidomes, proteomes and genomes, the OMICS technologies have now emerged as self-standing research fields relying on well-established and recognized analytical methods, such as mass spectrometry techniques (GC-MS and LC-MS/MS), in addition to modern spectroscopic approaches based on NMR (¹H; ¹³C), IR and sensor technologies, to better characterize food matrices, identifying their components and defining nutritional properties. This comprehensive strategy, based on the integration of foodomic platforms, combined with high-resolution analytical approaches and data processing, can help us to elucidate some critical issues in food analysis related with food safety and food quality. In turn, this will progress our understanding of the biochemical, molecular and cellular mechanisms related with the health benefits of bioactive food components.

This Special Issue aims to attract contributions on all aspects of the food science, food chemistry and food analysis supported by different OMICS platforms. There is still the challenge to further explore food authentication and adulteration in addition to food safety and nutrition issues based on different high throughput analytical methodologies.

Prof. Dr. José Sousa Câmara
Dr. Rosa Perestrelo
Dr. Jorge Pereira
Guest Editors

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