Recently, Zhang Jinrong, a 2020 undergraduate student of the Food Science and Engineering major in the School of Food and Biological Engineering, has published an article titled “Mechanistic insights into the interaction of Lycium barbarum polysaccharide with whey protein isolate: Functional and structural characterization” as a co-first author in the international academic journal of food science, Food Chemistry (CAS Q1 TOP, IF: 8.5), with our school as the first author’s institution. This is the first time for our university to publish a paper with undergraduates as the first author in an international SCI journal, which is a landmark achievement for the further improvement of the quality of undergraduate talent cultivation and the construction of disciplines and majors in FPNU.

The co-first author of the paper are Dr. Wang Hailin and Zhang Jinrong, a 2020 undergraduate from the School of Food and Biological Engineering of our school, and the co-corresponding authors are Professors Xiang Leiwen and Rao Pingfan. The team members also include Zheng Shaomin, a 2022 undergraduate majoring in Food Science and Engineering, and Chen Ying (under the joint cultivation with Fujian Normal University), a 2022 postgraduate majoring in Biotechnology and Engineering and so on.

The paper mainly introduces the important role of protein-polysaccharide interactions on the structure and stability of food systems and investigates in detail the effects of Lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP) on the functional properties (solubility, emulsification, antioxidant, digestibility, etc.) and structure of whey proteins isolate, as well as exploring the mechanism of the interactions between them. The results of the above studies lay a theoretical foundation for the application of the LBP-whey protein complexes in new types of food products.

Original link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.141080