AdditiveChem: A comprehensive bioinformatics knowledge-base for food additive chemicals

Abstract

Food additives are considered to be the catalysts and headstones of the modern food industry, affecting every step of food production, processing, and storage. The urgent need for a comprehensive curation of food additives, including their molecular structures, biological activities, and precise toxicological evaluations, prompted the creation of the AdditiveChem database (http://www.rxnfinder.org/additivechem/). This database has curated >9064 types of food additives, along with their molecular structure, chemical and physical properties, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity properties, biosynthesis and biodegradation methods, usage specifications, toxicological and risk assessment data, and targets in the human body from 16 databases to construct an efficient search platform for in silico preliminary evaluations. AdditiveChem database will enable an exploration of the relationship between the structure and function of food additives.

Keywords: Active ingredients; In silico preliminary evaluations; Structure-activity relationship; Virtual screening.