Use of an electrodialytic reactor for the simultaneous β-lactoglobulin enzymatic hydrolysis and fractionation of generated bioactive peptides

The enzymatic hydrolysis of beta-lactoglobulin and the fractionation of peptides were performed in one step in an electrodialysis cell with ultrafiltration membranes stacked. After 240 min of treatment, 15 anionic and 4 cationic peptides were detected in the anionic and cationic peptide recovery compartments. Amongst these 15 anionic peptides, 2 hypocholesterolemic, 3 antihypertensive and 1 antibacterial peptides were recovered and concentrated with migration rates ranging from 5.5% and 81.7%. Amongst the 4 cationic peptides, the peptide sequence ALPMHIR, identified as lactokinin and known to exert an important antihypertensive effect, was recovered with an estimated 66% migration rate. To our knowledge, it was the first attempt to perform hydrolysis under an electric field and to simultaneously separate anionic and cationic peptides produced. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.