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

凝固过程是我们日常生活中经常发生的事情，也是工业食品生产中的一个重要过程。例如，冷冻食品以储存或防止食品降解是地球仪的常规做法。然而，目前缺乏关于冷冻食品的详细分子过程的信息。了解这些过程对于冷冻海产品和动物肌肉组织进行保存和长期储存以确保这些食品的质量具有重要意义。在冷冻储存之前，低温冷冻海鲜已被证明可以保持高质量的质地和风味，因为冷冻速度快。快速冷冻速率被认为可以保留海鲜的理想属性，因为冷冻过程中形成的冰晶较小，与较慢的冷冻速率相比，这对肌肉蛋白质的危害较小。引入碳水化合物冷冻保护剂和盐等添加剂也有助于形成更小的冰晶，并提高冷冻食品在冷冻和海鲜冷冻储存过程中的质量。添加这些化合物已被证明可以延长海鲜的保质期并显着提高质量。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些食物的冷冻损伤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，因为它避免了当前实验的局限性，并且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物碳水化合物进行计算研究，探索其详细的分子特性和行为，以用作有效的冷冻保护剂。该研究计划将为食品凝固过程和生物组织冷冻的研究做出重大的科学贡献。彻底了解这些天然化合物的特性对于生产有效的海鲜冷冻保护剂将是无价的。这项研究计划对加拿大人的重要性和好处是显着的。此外，科学发现和见解可以应用于其他工业研究领域，用于结构化食品（如冷冻乳制品，人造黄油，糕点）的设计和更好的长期冷冻保存（海鲜，肉类和蔬菜）。此外，冷冻保护剂的使用具有巨大的潜力，并且可以扩展到人类和动物细胞、组织和器官的冷冻保存的应用。

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.