Non-thermal preparation, component identification, and in vivo antioxidant activity mechanism exploration of polyphenols and derivatives from Ananas comosus (L.) flesh.

Non-thermal preparation technology is beneficial for preserving the active substances of natural products such as Ananas comosus (L.) (AC), but the preparation of antioxidant components needed to be optimized and the antioxidant mechanism was unclear. In this study, AC polyphenols and their derivatives (ACP) were prepared by high-voltage pulsed electric field (PEF) combined with ultrasonic field (US) treatment, ethanol fractionation and macroporous resin purification, it was found that the LX-8 macroporous resin had the best adsorption and depletion rates for ACP when purified at an ACP crude extract concentration of 80 mg/mL and an ethanol concentration of 85°. At the same time, beiwutine, madecassoside, baicalein 7-O-diglucoside and glycyrrhizic acid were identified as the main small molecule components of ACP through HPLC-MS/MS, and these small molecules could autonomously bind to apoptosis related core proteins (STAT3, SRC, EGFR, AKT1, and ESR1) to exert potential antioxidant activity through network pharmacology and molecular docking analysis. Furthermore, ACP exhibited excellent in vitro scavenging property and enhanced the antioxidant capacity of C. elegans, and it was found that the nucleotide metabolic pathway was the key metabolic pathway for ACP intervention in improving the antioxidant capacity. These results provided theoretical references for ACP in the development of functional foods, and supported the high-value utilization of AC resources and the potential application of ACP as a natural antioxidant in the food industry.