Biomarkers identification of dietary polyphenols intake using metabolome and proteome approaches

Abstract

Diets rich in fruit and vegetables are usually associated with health and a reduced risk of developing several diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and many forms of cancer. In fact, these healthy effects have been related to the phytochemical (mainly polyphenol compounds) of plants and/or plant-derived foods. Initially, the biological activity of the dietary vegetable and fruits polyphenols were attributed to their strong antioxidant capacity, but investigations into the mechanism of action has demonstrated to be more complex, involving modulation of the gene expression and cellular signaling processes. Another important challenge related to the characterization of the biological action of polyphenols, such as flavonoids, refers to the very limited current knowledge regarding their bioavailability, mainly the role of the polyphenol metabolism. Metabolomics and proteomics have been proposed as a powerful tool to explore the complex relationship between nutrition and metabolism since metabolomics access modifications in the metabolome (the set of metabolites present in a cell, tissues or biological fluid) under the effect of genetic and/or physiological or environmental factors. Thus, the goals of this work are, initially, the characterization of the polyphenol in Brazilian typical fruits, identifying new sources of fruits with potential biological activity. Furthermore, develop and apply metabolomics and proteomics tools in clinical studies using healthy volunteers in acute and short-term treatment in order to evaluate the impact of the polyphenol intake on the overall metabolism. One important challenge in nutritional metabolomics is identify new biomarkers or biomarker patterns that could be use to estimate the dietary phytochemicals consumption or exposure and new markers of effects in order to correlate the intake of phytochemicals with health effects in vivo. The first model that will be investigated will be based in orange juice ingestion, source of flavanons, in diet rich in lipids model