[PROACTIVE]

FAO estimates that about a third of the food produced for human consumption each year is lost, where the most wasted or underexploited raw materials/products are plant-based ones (cereals, fruits, and vegetables). To overcome this drawback, the European Green Deal addressed the future European plans towards a sustainable food system strategy and the use/reuse of the natural resources more efficiently. Due to their intrinsic biological activities, food by-products (by-Ps) can be valorized in an integrated way transforming them into functional ingredients. Among others, by-Ps rich in protein can represent a natural resource of bioactive peptides (BPs). BPs refer to various amino acid sequences and protein fragments, normally comprising 3-20 amino acids able to benefit human health. BPs have to be released from the whole protein source by means of specific enzymes, already present in by-Ps or produced by selected microbial strains employed in fermentations. Main aim of PROACTIVE is the exploitation of five by-Ps categories (oil, cereal, legume, fruit, and vegetable by-Ps) to recover BPs for the fortification of new healthy foods intended for a wide population. Developing new tailored and eco-friendly biotechnological tools to enhance BPs release in by-Ps and obtaining multifunctional foods are the main PROACTIVE challenges.

The production of BPs will be modulated and enhanced combining different biotechnologies. Fermentation driven by selected microbial strains or consortia, combined with enzymatic hydrolysis and/or optimised high-pressure homogenization (HPH) treatments will be used to enhance the release of BPs from plant by-Ps. The analyses and the selection of by-Ps precursors of cryptic BPs, as well as the study of the link between microbial strains and their proteases-encoding genes will be pivotal. For this, highly innovative in silico proteome analyses to select and predict the yield of BPs from by-Ps proteins will be adopted as the preliminary strategy. Microbial genomes deposited in databases will be the source to find the genes encoding for the target enzymatic activities. The proteolytic activities and the release of BPs by the selected yeasts and LAB strains will be further enhanced by optimised sub-lethal HPH. Purified BPs will be evaluated in vitro for their antioxidant, immunomodulation, and antimicrobial activities. PROACTIVE will develop model BPs-enriched foods at pilot scale (beverages, snacks, bread), which will be further characterized for their stability and rheological, nutritional and sensory properties. The health-promoting potential of BPs-enriched foods will be assessed on human cell lines and human gut microbiome.

Research programme: PRIN

Research areas: Agro-environmental and food microbiology

Scientific officer: Rosalba Lanciotti

Period: 08/05/2022 - 08/05/2025

Research groups: Rosalba Lanciotti, Loredana Baffoni, Francesca Patrignani, Lucia Vannini

Other UNIBO Departments involved: Pharmacy and Biotechnology

Project Manager: Valeria Bregola