Production and characterisation of hyaluronidase and elastase inhibitory protein hydrolysates from Venus clam

The hydrolysates of fresh and boiled Venus clams with five different proteases for the production of low-molecular protein hydrolysates were optimised by response surface methodology. Alcalase hydrolysates exhibited the strongest hyaluronidase inhibitory activity. The optimum hydrolysis conditions of fresh and boiled clams were< enzyme-to-substrate ratio (E/S), 2.15%; time, 150min; water-to-substrate ratio (W/S), 83.84mLg(-1) for fresh clam, and E/S, 2.02%; time, 4.11h; W/S, 69.74mLg(-1) for boiled clam. The fresh and boiled clam protein hydrolysates were fractionated by S-200 HR size-exclusion chromatography, which resulted in one (FH1) and two (BH1 and BH2) fractions, respectively. BH1 exhibited the highest hyaluronidase and elastase inhibitory activities with specific activities of 141.15 and 81.36%mLmg(-1), respectively. Therefore, the boiled Venus clam hydrolysate might be developed as a cosmeceutical agent because of its strong hyaluronidase and elastase inhibitory activities.