Metabolomics and cell culture analysis of the impact of whole grain phytochemicals on human nutrition
Kati Hanhineva, Department of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition/Food and Health Research Centre, University of Kuopio, P.O. Box 1627, 70210 Kuopio
Consumption of whole grain foods is convincingly associated with reduced incidence of serious ailments like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. However, the mechanisms of their protective effect remain unknown, partly because of the diversity of the active constituents in whole grain products and partly because of the complexity of the metabolic responses to each of them.
In this project the impact of diet rich in whole grain cereals is studied by focusing on the analysis of small bioactive metabolites, by applying methods including biomarker screening and metabolite profiling (LC-MS). During the last decade several extensive human intervention studies have been carried out at our Department on diets containing different composition of cereal products, mainly whole grain rye versus white wheat. Sample sets of urine and plasma from these intervention studies are analyzed by non-targeted LC-MS metabolite profiling to assess the impact of the diet at soluble metabolite level.
In addition to human samples, another topic on this study is to monitor the effect of food derived compounds on cell cultures, starting with adipose tissue systems. By exposing cultivated cells either to pure compounds or food extracts and profiling their impact on the cellular metabolome, we aim to identify the components most responsible for the health beneficial effect of plant rich diet, and on the other hand to study the changes driven at the cellular metabolism by plant borne components.
Furthermore, the phytochemical content of the plant material used for food production will be profiled in parallel with the samples from human interventions and cell cultures in order to gain insight into the alterations occurring on the bioactive compounds in human metabolic system and to increase the understanding of the health potential of whole grain foods.