Complexation of Wheat Starch and Safflower Seed Oil Through Heat Moisture Treatment: Structural, in Vitro Digestion, Physicochemical Properties, and Molecular Docking Simulation

Abstract

Rapid digestion of starch has a significant effect on human blood glucose, whereas complexes of starch with lipids reduce enzymatic hydrolysis, thus maintaining a stable postprandial glycemic response. The present study focused on the structure, physicochemical properties and in vitro digestive characteristics of the complexes (WS-SO) formed from wheat starch (WS) and safflower seed oil (SO) by hygrothermal treatment (HMT) at different moisture contents. Compared with WS starch, FTIR showed that the characteristic absorption peaks of C=O appeared in both WS-SO at 1747 cm-1, and XRD indicated that the structures were all transformed from A-type to V-type, which proved the formation of WS-SO; when the moisture content was 30%, the obtained WS-SO 30% was more thermally stable and more resistant to aging; the in vitro digestion results showed that WS-SO 30% had good antidigestive properties, with the lowest fast-digestible starch content (RDS) of 58.65%; the highest slow-digestible starch (SDS) content of 17.14% and resistant starch (RS) content of 24.21%. The molecular docking results indicated that WS-SO formed a stable structure through hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic forces. These studies provide valuable insights into starch-lipid exploitation.

Keywords: Starch-lipid complex, In vitro digestion, Molecular docking