Bioactive interactions in food and natural extracts
Sofia Moco, Denís Barron · 2017
Nature is a deep resource of potential bioactives. These are often secondary metabolites with a wide variety of physico-chemical properties, able to induce effects on metabolism, by activating or inhibiting protein targets, and thereby cascading biological effects. In this chapter we provide an overview on how to discover bioactivity in natural extracts, by making use of both traditional medicine knowledge and state-of-the-art screening technologies. Due to the chemical complexity inherent to natural small molecules, advanced techniques such as mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy are ideal tools to address a broad range of small-molecule applications. As natural bioactives, often present in extracts and foods, are mostly low-affinity ligands of multiple targets, network pharmacology approaches offer a unique opportunity of mapping effects of bioactives in a systems biology perspective. Integrating computational tools with state-of-the-art ‘omics’ approaches, networks can be built to elucidate both primary and side effects, toxicity, but also multi-target effects and even potential bioactive synergies.