Pilot-scale purification of zeamatin, an antifungal protein from maize.

Zeamatin is an antifungal protein isolated from the seeds of Zea mays. A practical process for isolation and purification was developed to increase recovery yields for future testing of zeamatin as a novel therapeutic drug. Zeamatin was extracted with buffer from corn meal milled to flour. Solids were removed from the extract using pressure filtration, and zeamatin was purified using two separate reverse-phase chromatography steps. Determination of the amino-terminal amino acid sequence, Western blotting using anti-zeamatin antibody, and activity against Candida albicans were used to confirm that the purified protein was zeamatin. From 5 kg of corn meal, approximately 110 mg of zeamatin was purified to apparent homogeneity.