Atomic force microscopy food structure

Funami, T., Hiroe, M., Noda, S., Asai, I., Ikeda, S., and Nishinari, K. (2007). Influence of molecular structure imaged with atomic force microscopy on the rheological behavior of carrageenan aqueous system in the presence or absence of cations. Food Hydrocolloids 21, 617-629. 

Noda, S., Eunami, T., Nakauma, M. et al (2008) Molecular structures of gellan gum imaged with atomic force microscopy in relation to the rheological behavior in aqueous systems. 1. Gellan gum with various acyl contents in the presence and absence of potassium. Food... 

With the advent of confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy (CLSFM) [39], multiple photon microscopy (MPM) [40,41], and atomic force microscopy (AFM) [5], three new tools have been added to the standard tools of light microscopy (LM) [42-45] and electron microscopy (EM) [35,46-50] that were most widely used in the past to study the microstructure of fats and foods in general. The work of Heertje et al. [35,36,39,51] on visualization of the microstructure in fats remains one of the most important contributions to the field. In their method, a cold solvent mixture (butanol-methanol) was used to remove the liquid oil form the solid fat in a sample mounted on a special holder. After removal of the liquid oil, the structure of the solid fat network could be visualized. 

Zein is the major storage protein of maize, which is widely used environmentally for packing-materials in food engineering. In this paper, nano-structures of waxy maize zeins were investigated in virtue of atomic force microscopy (AFM), and morphological properties of nano-particles composing waxy maize zein Mm were analyzed. 

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