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In order to find dietary conditions favouring endogenous equol biosynthesis, a pooled faecal homogenate from equol-producing women was used to inoculate the TIM-2 artificial model of the human proximal colon. The model was fuelled with control diets not supplemented (C) or supplemented (C-ISO) with isoflavones, and two isoflavone-containing diets rich in carbohydrate (CH-ISO) or protein (PR-ISO). Compared to the C-ISO control, the CH-ISO diet doubled the production of equol, while with the PR-ISO diet the production of equol in cultures decreased sharply. The CH-ISO diet was also associated with enhanced butyrate production. The numbers of most bacterial populations analysed did not significantly change along cultures with any of the diets. Surprisingly, counts for a gene involved in equol production (tdr) were reduced in all cultures, reflecting a reduction in the number of equol-producing bacteria. In conclusion, under the TIM-2 culture conditions established, the CH-ISO diet favoured the synthesis of equol.

Muchos estudios epidemiológicos sugieren que la ingesta de isoflavonas está relacionada con una disminución de los síntomas de la menopausia, así como una menor incidencia de enfermedades dependientes de hormonas, asociadas al envejecimiento, neurodegenerativas, cardiovasculares y ciertos tipos de cáncer. Tras la ingesta, las isoflavonas se metabolizan en diversos compuestos con mayor o menor actividad biológica. El equol es el metabolito derivado de las isoflavonas con mayor actividad estrogénica y antioxidante, actividades a través de las que estas influyen en la salud. Sin embargo, sólo entre el 30-60% de los humanos son capaces de producir equol y, por tanto, quizá sea esta parte de población la única que se beneficia plenamente del consumo de isoflavonas. El equol lo producen determinadas poblaciones microbianas intestinales poco caracterizadas. Tal y como ocurre con otras poblaciones intestinales, el número y la actividad de los productores de equol podrían estar influenciados por la alimentación. A este respecto, algunos estudios in vitro ya han sugerido que la dieta puede influir en el metabolismo de las isoflavonas y, por tanto, en la formación de equol. El objetivo de este trabajo ha sido evaluar en un modelo de intestino artificial el efecto de dietas de distinta composición sobre la producción de equol.

Cultured beef is a method where stem cells from skeletal muscle of cows are cultured in vitro to gain edible muscle tissue. For large-scale production of cultured beef, the culture technique needs to become more efficient than todays 2-dimensional (2D) standard technique that was used to make the first cultured hamburger. Options for efficient large-scale production of stem cells are to culture cells on microcarriers, either in suspension or in a packed bed bioreactor, or to culture aggregated cells in suspension. We discuss the pros and cons of these systems as well as the possibilities to use the systems for tissue culture. Either of the production systems needs to be optimized to achieve an efficient production of cultured beef. It is anticipated that the optimization of large-scale cell culture as performed for other stem cells can be translated into successful protocols for bovine satellite cells resulting in resource and cost efficient cultured beef.