Research, teaching and third-party activities are carried out in the Nutritional Biochemistry laboratory.
The laboratory activities aim to study the role of specific nutrients and bioactive components of food to promote the formulation of food products which, if included in a healthy diet, support the well-being of individuals and optimize their state of health.
Research topics
• Nutritional value of foods and beverages
• Interaction between food components and the human organism
• Bioaccessibility/bioavailability of nutrients and/or other components of foods
• Impact of agronomic and processing technologies on the nutritional value of foods.
Equipment available in the laboratory
• In vitro digestion and absorption system
• Laminar flow hood and CO2 incubator for cell culture
• Absorbance, fluorimetry and luminescence microplate readers
• Gaschromatograph
• UV/visible spectrophotometer
• NanoDrop UV/visible microvolume spectrophotometer
• Thermal cycler for real-time PCR analysis
• ChemiDoc Bio-Rad image analysis system.
Services and consulting
The Nutritional Biochemistry laboratory carries out consultancy activities for industrial innovation needs, such as (1) the evaluation of the effectiveness of agronomic, breeding and technological techniques for the development of foods with a high nutritional value and/or functional foods; (2) preparation of nutrition labeling and nutrition scoring; (3) the assessment of the possibility of providing nutrition or health claims to products, according to the EU regulation.
Teaching and Training Activities
The lab offers its resources to support:
• development of bachelor’s and master’s degree theses
• development of doctoral and postdoctoral students' research projects.