Separation and Identification of Glutamine Peptides from Defatted Soybean Meal by Enzymatic Hydrolysis

Glutamine peptides were obtained from defatted soybean meal by enzymatic hydrolysis using a combination of Protamex~? and trypsinase. The results showed that the extent of hydrolysis and the concentration of Gln peptides in the hydrolysate were 22.02%and 6.05 mmol/L, respectively. The hydrolysates were fractionated by size-exclusion chromatography on a Sephadex G-15 into five major fractions(GelF1–GelF5). The peptide(GelF1) fraction with the highest glutamine peptide content(51.8%) was further evaluated to determine its molecular weight distribution. Most(92.37%) peptides were less than 1 000 Da. Glutamic acid and glutamine were the most abundant amino acids, accounting for up to 12.98% of the total amino acid content. In addition, the total amino acid content in GelF1 was higher than that in GelF2 and GelF3.

Optimization of low-abundance protein extraction and abundant protein removal from defatted soybean meal

The aim of this study was to optimize the conditions for the extraction of low-abundance proteins（LAPs） and the removal of abundant proteins（APs; β-conglycinin and glycinin） from soybean meal.Single factor and orthogonal experiments were designed to determine the effects of four factors（isopropanol concentration, total extraction time, ultrasonic power, and ultrasonic time） on protein concentration in isopropanol extracts.Proteins in the isopropanol supernatant and the cold acetone precipitate of isopropanol were identified by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis（SDS-PAGE） and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry（MALDI-TOF-MS）.The results showed that the optimal conditions were 50% isopropanol, ultrasonic pretreatment for 15 min at 350 W, and a total extraction time of 1 h.Under these conditions, the protein concentration in the isopropanol extracts reached 0.8081 g/L.Many LAPs were detected, including β-amylase, soybean agglutinin, soybean trypsin inhibitor, fumarylacetoacetase-like, phospholipase D alpha 1-like, oleosin, and even some unknown soybean proteins.The soybean APs（β-conglycinin and glycinin） were not found.The method may be useful for discovering new soybean proteins and extracting enough LAPs of soybean to allow further studies of their physiological effects on animals without the influence of APs.