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3 Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Nutrition, and 4 Department of Human Nutrition, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210; and 5 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), P.M.B. 5320, Ibadan, Nigeria
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: failla.3{at}osu.edu.
| ABSTRACT |
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| Introduction |
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Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is an important food source in tropical Africa where annual consumption exceeds 80 kg per capita (5). It is estimated that 70 million people obtain >500 kcal/d (2.1 MJ/d) from cassava. However, cassava is a poor source of protein, iron, zinc, and pro-VA carotenoids and contains toxic cyanogenic glucosides. The strategy to biofortify cassava with pro-VA carotenoids assumes that the additional complement of the pigments and their bioactive metabolites will be delivered to target tissues, i.e. it will be bioavailable. The bioavailability of carotenoids depends on numerous factors, including physico-chemical properties of the carotenoid, food matrix, method of processing, presence of promoters and inhibitors of carotenoid absorption in the meal, and the nutritional status and general health of the individual (6). The relationship between pro-VA content and bioavailability in cassava is unknown.
The absorption of carotenoids, like other fat-soluble compounds in a meal, requires transfer from the food matrix to emulsified oil droplets followed by partitioning into mixed micelles during digestion in the small intestine, uptake into enterocytes, and incorporation and secretion in chylomicrons. Accessibility refers to the transfer of the compound of interest from the food matrix to intestinal absorptive cells. The coupled in vitro digestion/Caco-2 cell uptake model has been proposed as a cost-effective, relatively high-throughput system for screening the accessibility of carotenoids (7) and iron (8,9) from foods, meals, and supplements. Such screening is needed to help plant breeders identify promising nutrient-dense genotypes to cross with high-yield varieties in subsequent planting seasons. In vitro digestion was recently validated as a relevant model for estimation of in vivo accessibility of carotenoids (10). The objective of this study was to determine the accessibility of ß-carotene (ßC) in cultivars of cassava with varying concentrations of ßC using the in vitro/Caco-2 cell model. The results suggest that ßC content of cultivars of cassava is an acceptable marker for the generation of varieties enriched in bioavailable ßC.
| Materials and Methods |
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Cassava varieties. Yellow-fleshed cassava genotypes were grown under rain-fed conditions in 2005–2006 in a randomized complete block design with 2 replications at the research farm of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria. Planting was done at the beginning of the rainy season (May to June). The varieties are tolerant to the major pests and disease of cassava. In addition, the varieties are high yielding. No fertilizer or herbicides were applied during the course of the experiment and hand weeding was done when necessary. At harvest, 12 mo after planting, 10 genotypes were selected based on the analysis of pro-VA carotenoid content conducted during the previous year. Three roots of different size (large, medium, and small) were selected for each genotype, washed, air-dried, packed in moist saw dust, and shipped to the US.
Preparation of cassava. Skin was peeled and tips from the distal and proximal portions (1–2 cm) were removed. Cubes (3–5 cm2) were cut and submerged in deionized (DI) water at room temperature to remove cyanogenic glucosides. The water was changed every 2 h for 10 h. The cubes were then submerged overnight in DI water before boiling them in 10 parts of DI water for 30 min. This treatment is similar to the manner in which cassava is generally prepared for human consumption. Boiled cassava was allowed to cool at room temperature and mashed before storage in 50-mL polypropylene screw-cap tubes with a blanket of nitrogen gas at –80°C. All the steps were performed with minimal light.
In vitro digestion.
Boiled cassava (3 g) was subjected to simulated digestion as described by Garrett et al. (7) with several modifications intended to better reflect physiologic conditions in the gut. The in vitro digestion consisted of simulated oral, gastric, and small intestinal phases of digestion. Because of its high starch content, the oral phase of digestion (10 min, 37°C) was included according to Oomen et al. (11), with the exception that that 3000 units
-amylase was added per gram cassava. A basal salt solution containing NaCl, KCl, and CaCl2 (final concentrations 120, 5, and 6 mmol/L, respectively) was substituted for 150 mmol/L as the basal solution for simulated gastric and small intestinal digestion. KCl was added as another physiological salt besides NaCl and CaCl2 was added for maximal activity of lipases. The pH of gastric digestion was adjusted to 2.5 ± 0.1 instead of 2.0 ± 0.1 and that of small intestinal digestion was adjusted to 6.5 ± 0.1 instead of 7.0 ± 0.1. Porcine pancreatic lipase (final concentration 0.2 g/L in 100 mmol/L NaHCO3) in addition to pancreatin and bile extract to facilitate lipid digestion. Finally, the micelle fraction was isolated from digesta by centrifugation at 5000 x g; 45 min at 4°C and filtration (0.22 µm pore size) of the collected aqueous fraction, instead of the previously described high speed centrifugation (167,000 x g; 35 min) followed by filtration. Pilot studies showed that carotenoid concentrations in the filtered aqueous fractions using the 2 different centrifugation speeds did not differ.
Uptake of ßC by Caco-2 human intestinal cells. Stock cultures of Caco-2 (HTB-37) cells were obtained from American Type Culture Collection and were maintained as previously described by our laboratory (12,13) except that DMEM containing Piperazine-1,4-bis(2-ethanesulfonic acid) (15 mmol/L, pKa = 6.8) was substituted for HEPES as a buffer in cell culture medium. Because of relatively low concentration of ßC in cassava cultivars, cells were cultured in T-25 flasks for experiments. Cultures of Caco-2 at passages 31–35 were seeded in T-25 flasks at 2 x 104 cells/cm2 and used for experiments between 12 and 14 d after reaching confluency.
Extraction of carotenoids from digesta, micelle fraction, cells, and cassava tubers. Carotenoids were extracted from digesta, micelle fraction, and Caco-2 cells as described by Garrett et al. (12). The extraction of carotenoids from cooked cassava was adopted from Kimura et al. (14). Sudan I was used as internal standard and its recovery suggested 97 ± 2.5% efficiency of extraction of carotenoids from samples (15).
HPLC analyses. Separation and quantification of carotenoids was achieved using a Waters YMC Carotenoid S-5 C30 reversed-phase column (4.6 mm x 250 mm; particle size, 5 µm) and HPLC system described by Chitchumroonchokchai et al. (16).
Statistical analysis of data. A minimum of 3 independent digestions and cell uptake studies were made for each test sample in an experiment and each experiment was replicated at least once to generate a minimum of 6 observations for each cultivar. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS (version 14.0, SPSS). Data are presented as means ± SEM. Differences were considered significant at P < 0.05. Means were compared by ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test. Simple linear regression analysis was performed to test the relation between the ßC concentration in boiled cassava and the quantity of the carotenoids incorporated into micelles generated during simulated digestion of cassava. The relationship between the content of all-trans ßC accumulated in Caco-2 cells when the monolayers were exposed to diluted fraction of micelles generated simulated digestion and the amount of all-trans ßC in cooked cassava cultivars was assessed using Pearson correlation analysis.
| Results |
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| Discussion |
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The observation that recovery of ßC after simulated oral, gastric, and small intestinal digestion of cassava exceeded 70% agrees with previous reports that carotenoids in other fruits and vegetables generally are stable during in vitro digestion (12,16,18,19) and during passage through the upper gastrointestinal tract of human subjects (20,21). The isomeric profile of ßC also was similar before and after digestion of cooked cassava as observed for ßC supplements (18). In contrast to the in vitro model, limited isomerization of all-trans ßC has been observed during in vivo digestion. The relative amount of 13-cis ßC was greater in duodenal lumen than in gastric lumen of subjects fed pureed carrots and tomato (20). Also, the ratio of 9- and 13-cis to all-trans ßC in the residual contents in stomach of gerbils increased compared to that in oil after oral administration (22).
Micellarization of ßC during digestion of cassava was independent of genotype, isomeric structure, and total content of the carotenoid. Approximately one-third of the ßC was transferred from boiled cassava to mixed micelles during the small intestinal phase of simulated digestion. The relative degree of ßC micellarization during digestion of cassava was greater than that reported during in vitro digestion of other vegetables and fruits, including carrot, spinach, tomato, and pumpkin (13,16,19,23). Moreover, the efficient micellarization of ßC during digestion of cassava occurred in the absence of exogenous fat, a promoter of carotenoid bioavailability, and its conversion to VA (24). Direct comparison of relative extent of micellarization may be misleading, because the actual quantity of ßC incorporated into micelles during small intestinal digestion of cassava was much less than during the digestion of the indicated foods containing higher amounts of this carotenoid. Numerous factors including subcellular location and physical state of the carotenoids affect the transfer of these pigments from the food matrix to micelles (6,10,25,26).
Uptake of ßC from micelles generated during simulated digestion of the 5 cultivars of cassava with the highest concentration of the carotenoid was examined to confirm accessibility. Caco-2 cells accumulated all-trans ßC in a concentration-dependent manner, whereas cis isomers of ßC were not detected. Assuming equivalent uptake efficiencies of uptake for cis and all-trans ßC (10–11% of medium), cell content of cis isomers was expected to be 0.1–0.25 pmol/mg cell protein. Because our limit of detection was 0.05 pmol ßC (signal-to-noise ratio for peak height = 5), the absence of cis ßC suggests that the all-trans isomer is more efficiently transported than cis isomers. Indeed, uptake of all-trans ßC from Tween 40 micelles by Caco-2 cells was 4- to 7-fold >9-cis- and 13-cis ßC (27). The recent demonstration that uptake of carotenoids by small intestinal cells is protein mediated (28,29) offers a likely explanation for such isomer specificity. It also is possible that cis ßC was isomerized to all-trans ßC in micelles or after transport into Caco-2 cells. However, we previously reported that the isomeric profile of ßC and xanthophylls is stable in both micelles in culture medium and after accumulation by Caco-2 cells maintained under standard culture conditions (16,23,30). During et al. (27) also demonstrated that uptake of all-trans ßC was directly proportional to medium ßC at concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 5 µmol/L but curvilinear between 5 and 20 µmol/L. Thus, the high correlation between micellar and cell concentrations of all-trans ßC in our study was expected, because medium contained only 0.02–0.04 µmol/L all-trans ßC.
Cooking disrupts plant cell walls and organelle membranes, facilitating greater access of digestive enzymes to substrates and release of carotenoids for incorporation into mixed micelles (31,32). Processing of plant foods also induces isomerization of carotenoids, thus increasing the levels of cis isomers. For example, baking is associated with isomerization and degradation of all-trans ßC in sweet potatoes (33). Although cis isomers of ßC also are precursors of VA, their retinol activity equivalence is only one-half that of all-trans ßC (34). The cis ßC content of the 10 genotypes of cooked cassava analyzed in this study was relatively high, ranging from 30 to 52% of the total ßC content. Cassava was cooked (boiled) and frozen as soon as the tubers arrived in our laboratory. Because we did not analyze samples of raw tuber, the contributions of genotype, style of cooking, and the genotype by cooking interaction on the observed ratio of cis:all-trans ßC requires future investigation. Nevertheless, high content of all-trans ßC appears to represent the primary factor for selecting cultivars of cassava for crossing with agroeconomically fit varieties.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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2 Author disclosures: S. K. Thakkar, B. Maziya-Dixon, A. G. O. Dixon, and M. L. Failla, no conflicts of interest. ![]()
6 Abbreviations used: ßC, ß-carotene; DI, deionized; VA, vitamin A. ![]()
Manuscript received 13 June 2007. Initial review completed 6 July 2007. Revision accepted 27 July 2007.
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