Food Chemistry and Hydrocolloids

Biography

Afef Janen, female, originally from Tunisia, food chemist, graduated with Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, Biology, and Geology (1995) from University of Science Tunis, Tunisia/Niamey, Niger, then went to the USA on assistantship to seek graduate education at Alabama A&M University (AAMU) in 1998. She earned an M.S. (2002) and a Ph.D. (2009) in Food Chemistry. She worked at Encapsula NanoSciences in Nashville, TN, formulating liposomes, mainly clodronate liposomes, to be distributed to universities and research labs, and constructing a clodronate liposome database for cancer researchers in 2010. From 2011 to 2012, she taught biological sciences at AAMU and conducted research in cytotoxicity. She went on to perform other research in the areas of biochemistry and biophysics. Dr. Janen currently is active in the following capacities: editor for the Phi Tau Sigma Honorary Society Newsletter (2013 to present), abstracts committee member for STEM Day (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) at AAMU, Normal, AL (April 2012 to present), editorial board member of Journal of Food Research, reviewer for Journal of Nanoparticle Research and Journal of Food Science, and a member of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) (1999 to present). She presently is a research scientist at AAMU.

Research Interest

My prior research work in my masters’ program focused on Food Chemistry, where I developed a method to retard the lipid oxidation process, a major cause of deterioration in the quality of meat and in particular, ground meats. Lipid oxidation affects the quality of meats and limits their shelf-life. Changes caused by lipid oxidation include loss of flavor, nutrient value, functionally and color, and development of off-flavors, and the accumulation of compounds such as malonaldehydes and several cholesterol oxidation products which may be harmful to the health of consumers. Antioxidants are often added to meat products to prevent lipid oxidation or decomposition and the development of off-flavors. However, the conventional methods of the antioxidants application do not target cell membranes, but rather is only distributed throughout cells of the meat. Therefore, using liposomes (capsules) containing antioxidants could exhibit specificity to the cell membranes and spontaneously release the Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA). From my thesis work, my findings have shown that how encapsulating BHA using a phospholipid capsule could increase antioxidant effectiveness, and eventually how to increase the expected shelf-life of ground turkey meat compare to the unencapsulated BHA and the control. Additional questions that were raised from thesis research were, “How to maximize the efficiency of the liposomal BHA and to elucidate the mechanisms of incorporation and release of BHA from the capsules?” As a Ph.D. student, my research work continued along this direction where the primary objectives on manipulating the method of incorporating the liposomal BHA in ground turkey meat in order to maximize the efficiency of BHA performance and using technologies such as Raman Spectroscopy (RS) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) to study the interaction of the antioxidant BHA and the membrane bilayer in meat products were accomplished. In my current research and post-doctoral studies, I focus on the structural and antimicrobial properties of metal oxide nanomaterials such as Lanthanum (La) and Neodymium (Nd) and new organometallic compounds of dialkyl and alkylene dithiophosphates, which are designed to exhibit strong bioactivity effect. Due to my experiences in my doctoral and currently post-doctoral research, I seek to embrace an interdisciplinary approach, which bridges food chemistry, biophysics and microbiology in extending my future research to provide new information addressing novel techniques to improve food safety through (1) biochemical and (2) biophysical techniques. With regards to the biochemical methods, I intend to evaluate the anti-radicalar activities of the antioxidant BHA, as well as formulate kinetic models of reactions; also study the antimicrobial activity of different nanoparticles by using the Bioscreen C and investigate their mechanisms of action. Regarding biophysical methods, I intend to continue working in the area of the incorporation of BHA into the membrane bilayer by using staining methods such as radiolabeling BHA in order to locate the antioxidant within the bilayer. Thus, my future research will lead to more usage of liposomes in nutrition and food science.