Arunkumar Elumalai’s scientific contributions

The natural body’s defence system plays a critical role to keep away the person from infections and minimize the risk of falling sick regularly. The smart way to improve immunity is changing the lifestyle by consuming food that has immunomodulatory activity. Spices/herbs have been used as preservatives as well as traditional medicines since ancient times due to their disease prevention capability. Numerous preclinical and clinical trials over few spans revealed the benefits of spices/herbs and their bioactive compounds in the control and prevention of several complications such as arthritis, respiratory diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, glucose impairment, and brain disorders. This chapter deals with the active compounds of spices and herbs and their potential health benefits in the management of the immune system. Overall, extensive research is required to support claims on the immune-boosting effects of foods. KeywordsImmunomodulatorPhytochemicalsBiomoleculesImmunoregulatorAutoimmune diseasesDetoxification

Food is intricate, and food quality and safety are indispensable elements. With the rising public demands for safe and nutritious food products, a range of innovative, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional concepts have emerged in the last few decades. Nanozymes, apart from their therapeutic efficacies, are gaining increasing interest in safety and quality monitoring in the agri-food sector. These enzyme-mimetic nanomaterials are proven to detect and monitor food safety in real-time with high selectivity, stability, reliability, and recyclability. Nanozymes sourced from various nanomaterials like carbon, metal, and their oxides, metal-organic frameworks, and others offer several advantages over natural enzymes in food-based applications. Apart from real-time monitoring, these are also known for their robustness to harsh food processing environments, ease of production, and smooth and facile surface modifications. Nanozymes undergo single and multiple enzyme pathways during food analysis applications, facilitating the on-demand tailorable activity. In this context, this review briefly summarizes the working strategies and factors affecting the catalytic activity of nanozymes; the emphasis is placed on the detection of targeted analytes in the food matrix using nanozymes. Interdisciplinary tools, combined with nanozymes that aid in developing rapid on-spot identification, including spectroscopies, smartphones, electrochemiluminescence, and ELISA, are elucidated systematically. Evidenced by the rising number of nanozyme-based publications, many of the practical gaps in food analysis are narrowed. Simultaneously, some challenges like variations in recognition-to-signal patterns, optimization of nanozymes, and reproducibility of methodology need to be addressed in the future.

The employment of dynamic digestion models for understanding the digestion behavior of foods has become an emerging trend in recent times, as the in vivo techniques used currently pose safety and ethical concerns. On the other hand, it is equally important to validate the mentioned digestion models, so that they can aid in assessing various aspects of digestion. Hence this study was planned to investigate the gastric emptying behavior of apples in a 3D printed stomach in vitro dynamic digestion model artificial stomach response kit. Further, the obtained results are validated by studying the gastric emptying behavior of apples in healthy and adult human individuals. Gastric emptying trends in both the in vivo and in vitro trials showed close half emptying times, i.e., 51.00±7.54and 57.84±4.41 min respectively. Also, Tlag, K, β obtained were similar in both the in vivo and in vitro experiments. In addition to that, a strong positive correlation is noticed between the in vivo and in vitro trials, r = 0.99. Upon successful validation with foods having diversified properties, the ARK® model can be complementary for in vivo techniques to understand the gastric emptying behavior and other digestion aspects of foods.

Millets are a traditional staple food of the dryland regions of the world and are rich in essential nutrients like protein, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins, and dietary fiber. Also, millets commonly synthesize a range of secondary metabolites to protect themselves against adverse conditions. These factors are collectively termed anti‐nutritional factors and the existence of these factors in millets might reduce the accessibility of the nutrients in humans. Some of these factors include protease inhibitors, tannins, non‐starch polysaccharides‐glucans, phytates, and oxalates each of which might directly or indirectly affect the digestibility of nutrients. Methods like soaking, germination, autoclaving, debranning, and the addition of exogenous enzymes have been used to reduce the anti‐nutritional factors and elevate the bioavailability of the nutrients. This review summarizes various methods that have been used to improve nutrient bioavailability, specifically emphasizing the use of enzymes to improve nutrient bioavailability from millets. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.

Understanding the gastric digestion process is essential for evaluating the bioaccessibility of nutrients from food matrices. The objective of this study was to investigate the kinetics of disintegration and gastric emptying patterns in a 3D printed stomach (ARK ® ) with white rice as the study sample. Modified power exponential model was used to fit the gastric retention data and the average t 1/2 and t lag values of the solid fractions were found to be 109.22 ± 4.20 and 84.16 ± 5.72 min, respectively. During the disintegration process, the weight percentage of medium size particles (∼0.35 mm) was found to be higher at 30 and 60 min. Moreover, there was a sharp decrease in the percentage of fine particles (<0.125 mm) at 90 and 120 min. The ARK ® could effectively mimic the physiochemical process of the human stomach, providing promising insights for future studies on the development of novel and functional food products.