Chicory: cutting the effects and the effectors for a functional food

Whole chicory flour (Chic) and three compounds of chicory roots: fructose (Fru), chlorogenic acids (CGA) and sesquiterpene lactones (STL) were separately analyzed for their health effects in mice. A whole transcriptomic analysis was conducted using Agilent DNA microarrays to investigate their nutrigenomic effects. Mice were fed with an aqueous decoction of the roots flour, with fructose, chlorogenic acids and sesquiterpene lactones solutions. The mice gavages consisted in a daily force-feeding of 500 µl of stemming solution decoctions of Chic, Fru, CGA or STL water solution besides the standard chow. As experiments were conducted for two different periods of time, two control sets were used: first control group (Ctr1) in parallel with chicory and fructose and a second control group (Ctr2) in parallel with CGA and STL. Three mice for each condition were sacrificed, 2 mice for Ctr1 and 2 mice for Ctr2. The central core of the liver left lobe was cut into cubes, a short segment (1 cm) of colon was also cut and enterocytes were harvested from upper ileal segments by mucosa scraping method. All these tissues were immediately frozen on liquid azote and stored as individual samples at -80°C for transcriptomics.