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

The enzymatic hydrolysis of β-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.