Determination of electroporation parameters on the accumulation of vitamin D3 in biomass of brewer's spent yeast (BSY)

• Grant number: 24/08266-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: November 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Food Science and Technology - Food Technology
• Principal Investigator: Carmen Sílvia Fávaro Trindade
• Grantee: Julio Abel Alfredo dos Santos Simone Come
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Zootecnia e Engenharia de Alimentos (FZEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Pirassununga , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/12730-0 - Microencapsulation of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) in brewer's spent yeast biomass, AP.R

Abstract

Vitamins are a group of organic compounds required for normal growth, metabolism, and maintenance of life. The main role of vitamin D is regulating serum concentrations of calcium and phosphates and maintaining bone health. Deficiency of vitamin D is a global concern, that affects a high proportion of people around the world, which can be aggravated by metabolic disorders and low food intake of the vitamin. Classic deficiency of vitamin D is associated with bone diseases; and musculoskeletal dysfunction. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized food fortification as an efficient and safe strategy to prevent vitamin D deficiencies. There are many technical barriers in Vitamin D3 fortification including homogeneity of this vitamin in the food matrix, physic-chemical/photochemical degradation, loss during processing and storage, and interactions with other components of the food matrix resulting in sensory changes thus affecting acceptability, palatability, and marketability. Microencapsulation technologies have already proved to be efficient in overcoming the incorporation of vitamin D3 in food. The use of brewer's spent yeast (BSY) to encapsulate vitamins is a very new approach that still has many possibilities to be explored, and encapsulation by electroporation is a promising alternative. Previous works have shown that applying a pulsed electric field can increase the efficiency of the accumulation of vitamin C, Zn, Fe, Se, and Mg in the biomass of yeast cells. The use of electroporation to introduce vitamin D has never been reported in the literature but may be feasible and useful for reducing vitamin D deficiency. This work aims to investigate the necessary conditions for the electroporation of vitamin D such as different pulse voltage amplitudes, pulse duration, and pulse quantity on the accumulation of vitamin D3 in the biomass of BSY. In addition, the characterization of the particles produced, the stability of the vitamin impregnated into BSY under storage, and its release from the particles under simulated gastric conditions also will be evaluated.