An overlooked compound contributing to boar taint and consumer rejection of meat products: 2-Aminoacetophenone.

Mainly skatole and androstenone have so far been considered causative for boar taint. Using a mixed methods approach it is shown herein that 2-aminoacetophenone (AAP) affects human perception of pork, too. We explored the importance of AAP in four trials: (1) chemical analyses of 221 fat samples from boar carcasses revealed that AAP occurs, on average, in similar quantities as skatole while the levels of androstenone being four-fold. (2) ranking tests with mixtures of androstenone and/or skatole with AAP presented on smell strips to trained sensory assessors showed that AAP amplifies boar odour. In order to study AAP's importance in meat products, four experimental variants of Lyon type sausage were then produced: a control, a product with added skatole (0.075 µg/g fat tissue), with added AAP (0.075 µg/g fat tissue), and with addition of both compounds. (3) results of a consumer discrimination test panel (n = 71) showed that, when added to a sausage system, APP causes a sensory difference of similar size as skatole while the methodology chosen affects the effect size: tetrad tests proved to be more sensitive than duo trio difference tests, in the tetrad test a sensory difference expressed as d' (d-prime) of 1.0 was reached. (4) a hedonic consumer test (n = 121) finally revealed that APP decreased consumer liking of the APP-spiked sausage - even to a stronger extent than skatole. APP caused significant drops in smell, taste, mouth-feel, after-taste and overall liking in Lyoner. Overall the findings suggest that, in the context of pork meat, AAP is of similar olfactory importance as skatole.

Identification of Cross-Species Marker Peptides for the Detection of Mammalian and Poultry Meat in Vegan and Vegetarian Foods.

Authentication of vegan and vegetarian foods is important since these increasingly popular food items could be adulterated with cheap meat to increase profit margins. In this study, nine marker peptides for the detection of meat (several species) were identified applying liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). These marker peptides enable the crucial differentiation of beef versus milk and chicken meat versus egg, demonstrated by the investigation of 19 commercial vegetarian meat substitutes containing milk and egg. Extensive experimental testing proved the presence of the cross-species meat marker peptides in 19 food-relevant types of mammals and poultry as well as their absence in more than 136 plant-based ingredients for the production of vegan and vegetarian foods. An authentic vegan sausage matrix based on an actual retail product was produced and spiked with 5.0%, w/w meat to confirm the high signal intensities and the heat stability of the marker peptides.

Comparison of Targeted (HPLC) and Nontargeted (GC-MS and NMR) Approaches for the Detection of Undeclared Addition of Protein Hydrolysates in Turkey Breast Muscle.

The adulteration of fresh turkey meat by the undeclared addition of protein hydrolysates is of interest for fraudsters due to the increase of the economic gain by substituting meat with low cost ingredients. The aim of this study was to compare the suitability of three different analytical techniques such as GC-MS and 1H-NMR with HPLC-UV/VIS as a targeted method, for the detection of with protein hydrolysates adulterated turkey meat. For this, turkey breast muscles were treated with different plant- (e.g., wheat) and animal-based (e.g., gelatin, casein) protein hydrolysates with different hydrolyzation degrees (15-53%: partial; 100%: total), which were produced by enzymatic and acidic hydrolysis. A water- and a nontreated sample (REF) served as controls. The data analyses revealed that the hydrolysate-treated samples had significantly higher levels of amino acids (e.g., leucine, phenylalanine, lysine) compared with REF observed with all three techniques concordantly. Furthermore, the nontargeted metabolic profiling (GC-MS and NMR) showed that sugars (glucose, maltose) and/or by-products (build and released during acidic hydrolyses, e.g., levulinic acid) could be used for the differentiation between control and hydrolysates (type, degrees). The combination of amino acid profiling and additional compounds gives stronger evidence for the detection and classification of adulteration in turkey breast meat.

Biodiversity of refrigerated raw milk microbiota and their enzymatic spoilage potential.

The refrigerated storage of raw milk selects for psychrotolerant microorganisms, many of which produce peptidases and lipases. Some of these enzymes are heat resistant and are not sufficiently inactivated by pasteurisation or even ultra-high temperature (UHT) treatment. In the current study, 20 different raw cow's milk samples from single farms and dairy bulk tanks were analysed close to delivery to the dairies or close to processing in the dairy for their cultivable microbiota as well as the lipolytic and proteolytic potential of the isolated microorganisms. Altogether, 2906 isolates have been identified and assigned to 169 species and 61 genera. Pseudomonas, Lactococcus and Acinetobacter were the most abundant genera making up 62% of all isolates, whereas 46 genera had an abundance of <1% and represent only 6.6%. Of all isolates, 18% belong to hitherto unknown species, indicating that a large fraction of the milk microbiota is still unexplored. The potential of the isolates to produce lipases or peptidases followed in many cases a genus or group specific pattern. All isolates identified as members of the genus Pseudomonas exhibited mainly lipolytic and proteolytic activity or solely proteolytic activity. On the other hand, nearly all isolates of the genus Acinetobacter were lipolytic but not proteolytic. Only 37% of all tested lactic acid bacteria (LAB) showed enzymatic activity at 6 °C and the type of activity was proteolytic in 97% of these cases.

Investigation of the Germination of Barley and Wheat Grains with a Design of Experiments for the Production of Hydrolases.

The production of hydrolases from cereals has been examined in order to investigate food-derived enzymes as an alternative source to microbial enzymes for the use in food processes. For that, the influence of temperature on the pretreatment, imbibition and germination of barley and wheat grains was determined by measuring the ß-glucosidase, ß-galactosidase and lipase activities using a design of experiments. The evaluation of the statistical model showed an increase of the ß-glucosidase activity with low imbibition and low germination temperature for barley grains and low imbibition and high germination temperature for wheat grains. The maximum ß-glucosidase activity in wheat extracts was (585±151) nkat per g of dry mass (dm), while in barley extracts it was (109±15) nkat per g of dm. The maximum ß-galactosidase activities in barley and wheat extracts were (34±12) and (63±23) nkat per g of dm, respectively. The maximum lipase activities of (6.7±0.1) and (4.6±4.4) nkat per g of dm in barley and wheat extracts, respectively, were rather low compared to the glycosidase activities. The extracts were also tested for other hydrolase activities (e.g. peptidase and α-amylase activities). The insights obtained enable the basis for the potential use of cereal hydrolases in food processing, which might be attractive to consumers.

Automated multi-step purification protocol for Angiotensin-I-Converting-Enzyme (ACE).

Highly purified proteins are essential for the investigation of the functional and biochemical properties of proteins. The purification of a protein requires several steps, which are often time-consuming. In our study, the Angiotensin-I-Converting-Enzyme (ACE; EC 3.4.15.1) was solubilised from pig lung without additional detergents, which are commonly used, under mild alkaline conditions in a Tris-HCl buffer (50mM, pH 9.0) for 48h. An automation of the ACE purification was performed using a multi-step protocol in less than 8h, resulting in a purified protein with a specific activity of 37Umg(-1) (purification factor 308) and a yield of 23.6%. The automated ACE purification used an ordinary fast-protein-liquid-chromatography (FPLC) system equipped with two additional switching valves. These switching valves were needed for the buffer stream inversion and for the connection of the Superloop™ used for the protein parking. Automated ACE purification was performed using four combined chromatography steps, including two desalting procedures. The purification methods contained two hydrophobic interaction chromatography steps, a Cibacron 3FG-A chromatography step and a strong anion exchange chromatography step. The purified ACE was characterised by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and native-PAGE. The estimated monomer size of the purified glycosylated ACE was determined to be ∼175kDa by SDS-PAGE, with the dimeric form at ∼330kDa as characterised by a native PAGE using a novel activity staining protocol. For the activity staining, the tripeptide l-Phe-Gly-Gly was used as the substrate. The ACE cleaved the dipeptide Gly-Gly, releasing the l-Phe to be oxidised with l-amino acid oxidase. Combined with peroxidase and o-dianisidine, the generated H(2)O(2) stained a brown coloured band. This automated purification protocol can be easily adapted to be used with other protein purification tasks.

Isothermal titration calorimetry as a tool to determine the thermodynamics of demicellization processes.

Demicellization of a 90 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution in water at 10, 22, and 30 °C was studied by isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). ΔH of the demicellization process was strongly temperature dependent, having an exothermic progression (-20.4 ± 0.9 kJ∕mol, max) at 10 °C and an endothermic one (3.7 ± 1.2 kJ∕mol, max) at 30 °C. ΔH for micelle dilution followed a slightly endothermic progression (0.9 ± 0.5 kJ∕mol at 30 °C, 0.7 ± 1.3 kJ∕mol at 22 °C, and 0.0 ± 0.5 kJ∕mol at 10 °C) at all studied temperatures. No differences in ΔH for micelle dilution and demicellization was observed at 22 °C. The temperature dependence of ΔH measured by ITC could be related to hydrophobic interactions. Therefore, ITC was shown to be a useful tool to describe the thermodynamics of demicellization processes and in addition to determine alterations in ΔH caused by changes in hydrophobic and steric∕electrostatic interactions.

Expression, one-step purification, and immobilization of HaloTag(TM) fusion proteins on chloroalkane-functionalized magnetic beads.

The presented work introduces a novel method to immobilize enzymes either purified or directly out of a crude extract onto magnetic particles in the micrometer range. This method is based on the creation of a fusion protein consisting of the enzyme of choice and a mutant dehalogenase. The dehalogenase gene is commercially available from the company Promega under the name HaloTag(TM). When the fusion protein is contacted with magnetic beads having chemically synthesized, chloroalkane ligands on their surface, the dehalogenase and the ligand undergo a covalent coupling leading to stable and spatially defined immobilization. The principle was proved with a lipase fused to the HaloTag(TM) gene and magnetic poly(methyl)methacrylate beads as carriers. The solubility of the tagged lipase was strongly increased by fusion of the malE gene at the N-terminal end of the HaloTag(TM) lipase gene. This tripartite protein was purified on amylose resin and used for immobilization. About 13 µg protein could be immobilized per 1 mg of beads within a few minutes. Due to the defined binding site, no activity loss was observed in the course of the immobilization. The resulting enzyme carrier was tested with the same beads up to six times for lipase activity over a storage period of 36 days at 8 °C. No loss of activity was found during this time.

Circular dichroism analysis of penicillin G acylase covalently immobilized on silica nanoparticles.

Circular dichroism (CD) was used to characterize the secondary structure of penicillin G acylase upon covalent immobilization on silica nanoparticles. Covalent immobilization was achieved by functionalizing the silica nanoparticles with glutardialdehyde and coupling to the free NH(2) groups of the enzyme (lysine and arginine side chains). The loading of the covalently bound enzyme was increased up to saturation, which was reached at 54.6 mg immobilized enzyme per g silica nanobeads. For structural characterization of the commercially available enzyme its exact molecular mass was determined by mass spectrometry in order to enable precise evaluation of the CD data. The fraction of secondary structure elements of the free and immobilized enzyme were estimated from the respective CD spectra using standard algorithms (CONTINLL, CDSSTR, SELCON3). The fractions obtained by the different algorithms for the free enzyme agreed well with one another and also with data from X-ray diffraction described in the literature. Interestingly, the secondary structure fractions found for the immobilized enzyme were very similar to the free enzyme and nearly constant over all experiments. These results indicate that even a loading of up to 55.8 mg/g (enzyme per silica nanoparticles) causes only slight structural changes. However, the specific activity determined by a kinetic assay decreased by around 60%, when increasing the loading from 14.9 to 55.8 mg/g. Because of the fact that we found no major changes in the secondary structure, diffusion limitation seems to be the main reason for the decline of the specific activity.