Special Food Chemistry

In foods, amino acids are present in different forms - free, peptide-bound or bound in proteins. Amino acids can be chemically modified during food processing. We are interested in the chemical reactions occurring during these processes and

• identify (new) reaction products in model studies.
• synthesize modified (oxidized, glycated, alkylated...) amino acids, peptides and proteins.
• develop methods to quantify modified amino acids in food and in body fluids (e.g. blood plasma).

With these investigations we want to understand how the chemical modification of amino acids in food affects the quality of food, but also physiological processes in the body.