Perfil sensorial de misturas de café com leite em pó e sua aceitabilidade e preferência na Região Nordeste

Coffee is a product of great importance in the global economy and new drinks have been developed based on its beans to please more and more the taste of consumers. This work aimed to evaluate the sensory profile of five commercial brands of coffee and milk powder and its acceptability and preference in the Northeast region of Brazil. Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA), ranking preference test and overall acceptance test (hedonic scale) were applied. The samples showed distinct sensory profile and acceptability, with the descriptors “color of the powder”, “color of the beverage”, “coffee odor”, “coffee flavor” and “sweetness” the most important to differentiate samples. However, it was not possible to establish the preference drivers, as samples with similar sensory profiles presented opposite acceptability, that is, while one is most preferred; the other was the least preferred. This may indicate that there are attributes which have not been measured and which may be responsible for the preference. Thus, it is recommended that, in a later QDA study, the descriptors for coffee flavor and their specific notes should be more detailed.O café é um produto de grande importância na economia mundial e novas bebidas têm sido desenvolvidas à base do grão para agradar cada vez mais o paladar dos consumidores. Neste trabalho, objetivou-se avaliar o perfil sensorial de cinco marcas comerciais de misturas de café com leite em pó e sua aceitabilidade e preferência na região Nordeste. Para tanto, foram aplicados a Análise Descritiva Quantitativa (ADQ) e testes afetivos de ordenação-preferência e aceitação global (escala hedônica), respectivamente. As amostras apresentaram perfil sensorial e aceitabilidade distintos, sendo os descritores “cor da mistura em pó”, “cor da bebida”, “odor de café”, “sabor de café” e “doçura” os mais relevantes para diferenciar as amostras. No entanto, não foi possível estabelecer os condutores de preferência, pois amostras de perfil sensorial semelhante apresentaram aceitabilidades opostas, ou seja, enquanto uma foi a preferida, a outra foi a menos preferida, enquanto amostras com mesmo nível de aceitação apresentaram perfis diferentes. Isso pode indicar que existem atributos que não foram medidos e que podem ser responsáveis pela preferência. Dessa forma, recomenda-se que, em um estudo posterior de ADQ, os descritores de sabor de café e suas notas específicas sejam mais detalhados

Discovery pipelines for marine resources : an ocean of opportunity for biotechnology?

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement No 645884. CABI is an international intergovernmental organisation, and we gratefully acknowledge the core financial support from our member countries (and lead agencies) including the United Kingdom (Department for International Development), China (Chinese Ministry of Agriculture), Australia (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research), Canada (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), Netherlands (Directorate-General for International Cooperation),and Switzerland (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). See https://www.cabi.org/about-cabi/who-we-work-with/key-donors/ for full details.Marine microbial diversity offers enormous potential for discovery of compounds of crucial importance in healthcare, food security and bioindustry. However, access to it has been hampered by the difficulty of accessing and growing the organisms for study. The discovery and exploitation of marine bioproducts for research and commercial development requires state-of-the-art technologies and innovative approaches. Technologies and approaches are advancing rapidly and keeping pace is expensive and time consuming. There is a pressing need for clear guidance that will allow researchers to operate in a way that enables the optimal return on their efforts whilst being fully compliant with the current regulatory framework. One major initiative launched to achieve this, has been the advent of European Research Infrastructures. Research Infrastructures (RI) and associated centres of excellence currently build harmonized multidisciplinary workflows that support academic and private sector users. The European Marine Biological Research Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC) has brought together six such RIs in a European project to promote the blue bio-economy. The overarching objective is to develop coherent chains of high-quality services for access to biological, analytical and data resources providing improvements in the throughput and efficiency of workflows for discovery of novel marine products. In order to test the efficiency of this prototype pipeline for discovery, 248 rarely-grown organisms were isolated and analysed, some extracts demonstrated interesting biochemical properties and are currently undergoing further analysis. EMBRIC has established an overarching and operational structure to facilitate the integration of the multidisciplinary value chains of services to access such resources whilst enabling critical mass to focus on problem resolution.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

In Vitro Model of the Gram-Negative Bacterial Cell Envelope for Investigation of Anti-Infective Permeation Kinetics

The cell envelope of Gram-negative bacteria is a formidable biological barrier, inhibiting the action of antibiotics by impeding their permeation into the intracellular environment. In-depth understanding of permeation through this barrier remains a challenge, despite its critical role in antibiotic activity. We therefore designed a divisible in vitro permeation model of the Gram-negative bacterial cell envelope, mimicking its three essential structural elements, the inner membrane and the periplasmic space as well as the outer membrane, on a Transwell setup. The model was characterized by contemporary imaging techniques and employed to generate reproducible quantitative and time-resolved permeation data for various fluorescent probes and anti-infective molecules of different structure and physicochemical properties. For a set of three fluorescent probes, the permeation through the overall membrane model was found to correlate with in bacterio permeation. Even more interestingly, for a set of six Pseudomonas quorum sensing inhibitors, such permeability data were found to be predictive for their corresponding in bacterio activities. Further exploration of the capabilities of the overall model yielded a correlation between the permeability of porin-independent antibiotics and published in bacterio accumulation data; a promising ability to provide structure-permeability information was also demonstrated. Such a model may therefore constitute a valuable tool for the development of novel anti-infective drugs

microbeMASST: A Taxonomically-informed Mass Spectrometry Search Tool for Microbial Metabolomics Data

microbeMASST, a taxonomically informed mass spectrometry (MS) search tool, tackles limited microbial metabolite annotation in untargeted metabolomics experiments. Leveraging a curated database of >60,000 microbial monocultures, users can search known and unknown MS/MS spectra and link them to their respective microbial producers via MS/MS fragmentation patterns. Identification of microbe-derived metabolites and relative producers without a priori knowledge will vastly enhance the understanding of microorganisms’ role in ecology and human health