Isolation of Functional Peptides from Tofu-Whey Waste

摘要

Tofu is one of major food products made of soybean in Korea. In tofu-manufacturing process, tons of whey is threw away resulting in environmental and financial burden, but it was reported that tofu-whey contained various components including sugars, proteins, peptides and free amino acids. Through this research, industrially applicable isolation method using HP-20 resin/ion-exchange resin was developed to purify bioactive peptides as useful ingredients for dietary foods and drugs. As a result, it was found that the isolated fraction contained anti-coagulation activity, and inhibited a couple of enzyme activity, for example, Angiotensin converting enzyme and Elastase. Also, in this fraction, the content of glutamic acid was relatively higher than other amino acids, and some oligo-saccharides, e.g. stachyose, raffinose, and etc., were detected. Following further purification of this fraction with different conditions, it was suggested that one of major components was low molecular weight of peptide with 5-6 very similar amino acids. It is profitable for tofu- making industries to recover valuable materials from huge volume of waste contributing finance and image of company.