Assessment of antioxidant properties of membrane ultrafiltration peptides from mungbean meal protein hydrolysates
Authors: Sonklin Chanikan , Laohakunjit Natta , Kerdchoechuen Orapin 
Published: March 2018

Background Bioactive peptides can prevent damage associated with oxidative stress in the human body when consumed regularly. Recently year, peptides have attracted immense interest because of their beneficial functional properties, safety and little or no side effects when used at high concentration. Most antioxidant peptide has small size less than 1 kDa and contains high proportion of hydrophobic amino acid. Particularly Tyr, Leu, Ala, Ile, Val, Lys, Phe, Cys, Met and His exhibited high antioxidant activity. Mungbean protein contain high abundance of protein and hydrophobic amino acid contents, investigating its bioactivity is an important aspect of adding value to this by-product obtained from a growing industry. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to optimize the conditions used to generate MMPH with antioxidant activity form bromelain and to investigate the antioxidant activities of each molecular weight peptide fraction.

Methods Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used for screening the optimal conditions to produce Mungbean meal protein hydrolysate (MMPH). After that optimal MMPH was fractionated using ultrafiltration membranes with different molecular weight (MW) distribution. Crude-MMPH and four peptide fractions were investigated for five antioxidant activities: DPPH scavenging activity, Hydroxyl scavenging activity, Superoxide scavenging activity, Ferric reducing antioxidant power and metal ion chelation activity.

Results The optimal condition of crude-MMPH production was 12 % (w/w) of bromelain and hydrolysis time for 12 h. The EC50 of DPPH was the highest for the F4 peptide fraction (MW<1 kDa) at 0.5320 mg/mL. Metal ion chelating activity was generally weak, except for the F4 that had a value of 43.94% at a protein concentration of 5 mg/mL. The F4 also exhibited high hydroxyl and superoxide radical scavenging activities (54 and 65.1%), but poor activity for ferric reducing antioxidant power (0.102 mM Fe2+/mg protein) compared to other peptide fractions and crude-MMPH. Molecular weight and amino acid were the main factors that determined the antioxidant activities of these peptide fractions. Results show that F4 have high antioxidant potentials.

Discussion The lowest MW Fraction (less than 1 kDa) showed the highest DPPH activity, superoxide-, hydroxyl-scavenging activity and metal chelation activity. On the other hand, this fraction had poor ferric reducing power. This showed that low molecular weight has an important effect on antioxidant activities. According to the mechanism of the reaction, the potential of antioxidant activity was divided into two main groups: hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) and single electron transfer (SET). Therefore, this finding suggests that the antioxidant mechanism of peptides obtained mungbean could react with many species of free radicals by multiple mechanisms. Mungbean meal peptide can be developed into multiple functional foods which possess both antioxidant properties and aroma/taste.