Unravelling the Chemical Physics of Carbohydrate Cryoprotectants for Use in Food using Novel Molecular Dynamics Methodologies

固化过程是我们日常生活中常见的现象，也是工业食品生产中的一个重要过程。例如，冷冻食品以供储存或防止食品变质是全球的一种常规做法。然而，目前还缺乏关于冷冻食品的详细分子过程的信息。了解这一过程与冷冻海鲜和动物肌肉组织以保存和长期储存以确保此类食品的质量有关。由于冷冻的速度很快，在冷冻储存之前冷冻海鲜被证明保持了高质量的质地和味道。由于在冷冻过程中形成的冰晶较小，与较慢的冷冻速度相比，这对肌肉蛋白质的损害较小，因此快速冷冻速度被认为可以保留海鲜的理想属性。添加碳水化合物、低温保护剂和盐等添加剂也有助于冰晶变小，并在冷冻和海鲜冷冻储存期间提高冷冻食品的质量。添加这些化合物已被证明延长了海鲜的保质期，并显著改善了品质。然而，从微观分子的角度来看，对这些冷冻保护剂如何防止对这类食品的冷冻破坏的基本理解尚不清楚。计算机模拟技术为这种复杂的分子环境提供了独特的见解，因为它避免了目前实验的局限性，可以与实验结合使用，以支持实验观察。这项拟议的研究计划将系统地对复杂的食品碳水化合物进行计算研究，探索它们作为有效低温保护剂的详细分子性质和行为。这项研究计划将对食品凝固过程和生物组织冻结的研究做出重大的科学贡献。彻底了解这些天然化合物的性质对于生产有效的海鲜冷冻保护剂将是非常宝贵的。这项研究计划对加拿大人的重要性和益处是显著的。此外，这些科学发现和见解可以应用于其他工业研究领域，以设计结构化食品(如冷冻乳制品、人造黄油、糕点)，并用冷冻保护剂更好地长期冷冻储存(海鲜、肉类和蔬菜)。此外，冷冻保护剂的使用具有巨大的潜力，可以扩展到人和动物细胞、组织和器官的冷冻保存应用。

Solidification processes are common occurrences in our daily lives and an important process in industrial food production. For example, freezing of food for storage or to prevent food degradation is a routine practice across the globe. Yet, there is currently a lack of information on the detailed molecular processes of freezing foods. Understanding such processes is relevant in the freezing of seafood and animal muscle tissue for preservation and long-term storage to ensure the quality of such foods. Cryogenically freezing seafood before frozen storage has been demonstrated to retain a high-quality texture and flavor due to the rapid rate of freezing. Fast freezing rates are recognized to retain desirable attributes of seafood due to smaller ice crystal formation during the freezing process, which is less detrimental to muscle proteins compared with slower freezing rates. Introducing additives like carbohydrate cryoprotectants and salts also contributes to smaller ice crystals and enhances the quality of frozen food during freezing and the frozen storage of seafood. Addition of these compounds has been shown to extend shelf life of seafood and significantly improve quality. However, a fundamental understanding of how these cryoprotectants serve to prevent frozen damage to such foods is unclear from a microscopic molecular perspective. Computer simulation techniques offer unique insights into such complex molecular environments, as it avoids the limitations of current experiments and can be used in tandem with experiments to support experimental observations. This proposed research program will systematically undertake computational investigations into complex food carbohydrates probing their detailed molecular properties and behaviour for use as effective cryoprotectants. This research program will make significant scientific contributions to the study of food solidification processes and the freezing of biological tissues generally. A thorough understanding of the properties of these natural compounds will be invaluable to producing effective cryoprotectants for seafood. The importance and benefits of this research program to Canadians are significant. Furthermore, the scientific discoveries and insights could be applied to other industrial research areas for the design of structured foods (such as frozen dairy, margarine, pastries) and better long term frozen storage with cryoprotectants (of seafood, meat and vegetables). In addition, the use of cryoprotectants has enormous potential and can be extended to applications of cryopreservation of human and animal cells, tissues and organs.