Dear Colleagues,

Food represents a renowned source of molecules with a broad variety of potential biological effects on living organisms. Such a huge complex mix, which is typically associated with an extremely high case-by-case chemical variability, may elicit a wide spectrum of effects spanning from severe toxic outcomes to health promoting and protective actions. The inherent complexity of food chemical mixtures makes the use of integrated and interdisciplinary methods of analysis necessary to exhaustively assess the balance between risks and benefits that certain foods may bring to living organisms. Of note, the whole effect of certain foods on the health and wellbeing of consumers is a consequence of an extremely complex network of molecular events, wherein the inter-individual variability has an important role to take into account. Nonetheless, the investigation of mechanisms of action of toxicants, bioactives, and other food constituents represents an essential foothold towards a better understanding of the very early actions of chemicals of food origin. In particular, mapping the molecular aspects underlying the biological/toxicological outcomes of food components may provide an important blueprint either leading to a better interpretation of the currently available data or supporting more effective future experiments. In other words, the definition of the complex network of molecular events, including those at the very early stage of molecular cascades (referred to as molecular initiating events), is of utmost relevance to provide an informed background to support the aforementioned integrated and interdisciplinary methods of analysis.

In this context, the present Special Issue is expected to gather original research findings and review articles dealing with the mechanisms and modes of action of chemicals and other constituents of food. Innovative methodological works and new insights from investigating the action of food constituents, from a molecular/chemical standpoint and either individually or within mixtures, fall within the scope of this Special Issue. Also welcome are works dealing with the crosstalk between chemical and microbiological risk assessment—referred to as the potential effects of chemicals in food on the behavior of foodborne pathogens—from a molecular perspective.

Dr. Luca Dellafiora
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• bioactives
• xenobiotics
• molecular initiating event
• toxins
• food constituents
• mechanism of action