Mass spectrometry applied to animal production

Author(s)

Gustavo Braga Sanvido

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Química
• Defense date: 2012-04-06

Examining board members

Marcos Nogueira Eberlin; Humberto Márcio Santos Milagre; Paulo César Pires Rosa; Fábio Cesar Gozzo; Adriana Vitorino Rossi

• Advisor: Marcos Nogueira Eberlin

Abstract

Brazil is nowadays one of the biggest producers of foods from animal origins. This prominent role in the international market was only achieved through important investments made in biotechnology and technology. The first one was responsible for the productivity increase of national agriculture producers allowing then having a genetic gain of their herds and consequently allowing them to enhancing competitiveness in the international market. The technology increase have been taking us to improve our food processing ensuring higher quality products and allowing us to become manufacture exporters instead of been just raw products exporters. In this work it was suggested the use of mass spectrometry, a still very unknown technique in the food production field, in different points of animal origin food chain. For the embryo analysis a MALDI-Q-TOF was used. This technique allowed a lipid profile identification of each single sample showing to be more able to identify individual differences than the usual techniques (GC). The typification and monitoring of some changes in these profiles occurred during development phases showed to be intrinsic to the species and related to the environment. This strategy on MALDI-MS allowed the characterization of many species embryos and oocytes lipid profiles, contributing for the fields of research in reproduction as lipid profiles changes in cells during embryo development and its role on in vitro embryo cryopreservation. In the field of food control quality two works were developed. In the first one the detection of maltodextrin in milk powder was evaluated through the mass spectrometry fingerprint technique. The ESI was used for the fast, direct and simple identification of maltodextrin addition in milk powder. This method showed to be sensible, robust and highly selective and reliable, as it was proved by the enzymatic assays. The second work in the food control quality field used the MALDI-Q-TOF fingerprint technique to detect the exogenous fat addition in bovine milk powder. Through this technique we managed to precisely detect the addition of exogenous oil/fat in milk powder, through a fast and easy procedure. This procedure provided a robust and selective method to classification and control quality of milk powder. During the last years studies involving MS have been expanding in an impressive rate in the biological sciences field. The new requisites of quality and safety of consumer markets drive to the search of analytical methods able to seek lower detection and quantification limits. Due to the great versatility of MS technique it was possible in this work to develop analytical methods in two different areas (animal reproduction and quality of animal origin products) in the same field (animal production), with great efficiency. Furthermore it is noted that it has a fundamental importance to develop scientific experience in multi-disciplinary to create competencies to face new challenges and solve problems in the agribusiness field (AU)