Nature knows best – Lessons from plants on how to design stable emulsions resistant to lipid oxidation

Background: Lipid oxidation is one of the major causes of degradation of lipid-based products over time and the increasing demand of consumers for clean labels and sustainable products pushes us into rethinking the strategies to prevent it. Plants have already solved the lipid oxidation problem, by storing their lipids in very stable organelles, called oleosomes. However, it is not understood what properties impart this higher oxidative resistance.

Aim and methodology: The aim of this project is to understand the mechanism and conditions behind the oxidative stability of oleosomes. Interfacial composition of oleosomes will be modified either by changing the environmental conditions or by reconstituting artificial oleosomes with specific proteins/phospholipid composition. State-of-art analytical chemistry approaches (1H-NMR, GC-MS, LC-MS) will be used to correlate the interfacial composition of these oleosomes and their sensitivity to lipid oxidation. This should allow us to characterize for the first time the impact of interfacial composition on lipid oxidation pathways under different environmental conditions.

Outcome and economic benefits: The outcome of this project will broaden the application of oleosomes as natural emulsion and carrier systems and help us build nature-inspired emulsion systems with a higher resistance towards lipid oxidation. This project will contribute not only to develop products fitting the consumer demand for more natural and sustainable products, but also to reduce waste associated with lipid oxidation.