Teosinte (Dioon mejiae) is a dioecious tree native to Honduras, whose seeds are used to make flour for the preparation of traditional foods and beverages. The objective was to evaluate the nutritional and physicochemical composition of teosinte flour for the first time. Using diverse techniques, teosinte flour was found to be a high-calorie food rich in total carbohydrates and mainly composed of starch, with an amylopectin:amylose ratio of 2:1 and a concentration of resistant starch greater than 50%. Its proteins were similar to other cereals in which the essential amino acids glutamic acid, leucine, and especially lysine were the most important. Some 75% of its total dietary fiber was insoluble. The fatty acid profile was characterized by a high unsaturated fatty acid content in which oleic acid (C18:1) and linoleic acid (C18:2) predominated. As for minerals, teosinte flour had higher iron content, lower sodium concentration, and similar zinc, calcium, and phosphorus content to other cereal flours. We highlight that teosinte flour has nutrients and qualities that convert it into flour with excellent nutritional abilities and health benefits; it is also a very good industrial and technological alternative to be mixed mainly with types of flour from other sources.

Protein adsorption is influenced by many factors such as temperature, pH, protein size and structure, or surface energy and roughness, among others. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique are two of the techniques more used to produces ultrathin films of proteins on surfaces. In this work, we established protocols for the preparation of nanocoatings of bovine serum albumin (BSA) protein on glass surface using SAMs and LB. Furthermore, we determined how small changes in temperature and pH can affect the covering when SAMs are used. Using a combination of different analyses, such as relative roughness, dynamic contact angles, and atomic force microscopy (AFM), it was possible to establish conditions to obtain a uniform nanocoating using SAMs. The results of the analysis of the nanocoating performed using the LB technique were very similar to those obtained using SAMs. The Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (DLVO) theory in conjunction with the AFM images showed that electrostatic interactions are very important in the self-assembly process, but a process dominated solely by attraction is not sufficient to achieve a good SAM nanocoating, since it does not allow proper orientation and packaging of BSA molecules on the glass surface.