Food & Beverages

Biography

Biography: Gema Nieto

Abstract

The production of peptides through hydrolytic reactions seems to be the most promising technique to form proteinaceous antioxidants since peptides have substantially higher antioxidant activity than intact proteins. While hydrolyzed proteins have good antioxidant activity, it is still not well-understood how the composition of peptides influences their ability to inhibit lipid oxidation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the radical scavenging peptides from in vitro digests of chicken protein. For that, Chicken protein (CP) isolate was subjected to a two-stage in vitro digestion (1 h pepsin followed by 2-h pancreatin at 37ºC). The antioxidant potential of the CP digests was compared by assessing their capacity to scavenge 2, 20-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiszoline-6-sulphonic acid) (ABTS+) and DPPH, (hydroxyl •OH) radicals. The pepsin digest, which demonstrated the strongest activity against both radicals, was subjected to Sephadex G-25 gel filtration. Of the three fractions collected, fractions II (734 Da) and III (730 Da) showed the highest ABTS+ scavenging activity and were 30-32% superior to mixed chicken protein digest (P<0.05). Fraction III was most effective in neutralizing OH and was 89% more efficient (P<0.05) than mixed chicken digest. LC–MS/MS identified Ile-Glu-Cys, His,Val (III); Tyr, Val, Lys, Gln (II) and Arg, Glu,Ser,Ile,Gly, Asp (I) to be the prominent peptides/ amino acid in these fractions. Understanding the relationship between peptide composition and antioxidant activity could lead to the development of new class of extremely effective, multifunctional, generally recognized as safe antioxidants that could be used in many food applications.