In food products derived from cereals, the concentration of free asparagine in flours represents the key factor for the formation of acrylamide.This molecule represents one of the main risks to human health due to food.
Acrylamide is in fact a neurotoxic and genotoxic molecule , classified in group 2A among the substances defined as "probable human carcinogens" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
This molecule is formed in a wide range of starchy foods during common high-temperature cooking processes (frying, roasting, baking, and grilling), in which "Maillard cascade reactions" occur, caused by the reaction between reducing sugars, such as glucose, fructose, or maltose, and free amino acids, mainly asparagine, which are naturally present in many foods.
For this reason, agri-food research is interested in studying the metabolic and genetic mechanisms linked to the production of free asparagine in the seed , in order to select wheat genotypes with a low level of this amino acid.
Arecent study , coordinated by Elena Baldoni of the Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA) of the National Research Council (CNR) and just published in the journal "Food Chemistry", represents an important step forward in understanding the metabolic mechanisms underlying the accumulation of free asparagine in wheat.
The genetic variability of durum wheat present in an international germplasm collection was used to identify some chromosomal regions putatively involved in the accumulation of free asparagine in the grain.
Furthermore, the integration of genetic and metabolomic approaches has allowed to define specific metabolic pathways that influence the levels of free asparagine in the seed, as well as to identify four candidate genes, the study of which may provide important new information on the complex metabolic network underlying the determination of this trait.
The study was carried out in collaboration with several research groups in Italy and Switzerland.
The results of this research represent an important contribution to the development of new strategies aimed at mitigating the problem of acrylamide accumulation in wheat-based foods. (Source: https://www.alimentibevande.it /)