Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Increasing amounts of research show the bioactive role of peptides beyond their nutritional value. These food proteins derived bioactive peptides show huge potential to incorporate in functional foods, foods for specific health purposes and as nutraceuticals. These peptides have been found in various food sources in plant and animal protein origin. Peptides are released during fermentation or digestion of food proteins by proteolytic enzymes. Some of these released peptides exert biological activities such as antihypertensive, hypocholesterolemic, antioxidative, mineral-binding, opiate-like, antimicrobial, immuno- and cytomodulating activity. Now-a-days, the application of proteolytic enzymes in combination with new technologies such as membrane separation techniques allow the large scale production of bioactive peptides from various food proteins. This enables the enrichment of selected foods with bioactive peptides or the development of new functional foods. The present study focused on the bioactivities of casein hydrolysates for hypocholesterolemic (HC) properties. Bovine casein was used as the source for the production of bioactive peptides by enzymatic hydrolysis using trypsin alone and with a combination of trypsin and pepsin at different time intervals. Crude casein hydrolysate was further fractionated by membrane separation technique using two different molecular weight cut-off membranes at 10 kDa and 1 kDa. The crude hydrolysate was then compared with the collected permeates. Hypocholesterolemic effect of the hydrolysates and the permeates, using trypsin showed a reduction of cholesterol level by 39.5, 50.7 and 69.6%, respectively. Furthermore, a pronounced hypocholesterolemic effect of 44.9, 52.2 and 87.0% was observed by the combined action of pepsin and trypsin. The combined effect of trypsin and pesin and fractionation by ultrafiltration proved to be effective in cholesterol reduction.

Biography

Imran Irshad completed his PhD in 2011 from University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, UK. He is currently working as assistant professor of food science at PMAS - AAUR, Pakistan. Formerly, served as a Technical Manager at Barons Patisserie, United Kingdom, for over 9 years, has an extensive knowledge in food safety and food quality well.