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ARS Home » Plains Area » Manhattan, Kansas » Center for Grain and Animal Health Research » Grain Quality and Structure Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #166091
Title: CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS OF CEREAL PROTEINS: AN OVERVIEW

Author
item Lookhart, George
item Bean, Scott

Submitted to: Journal of Capillary Electrophoresis
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/15/2004
Publication Date: 4/30/2004
Citation: Lookhart, G.L. and Bean, S.R. 2004. Separation of cereal proteins by capillary electrophoresis: An overview. J. Cap. Electro. 9:23-30.

Interpretive Summary: Proteins are an important quality component of cereal grains. Proteins play important roles in food quality, nutrition, processing, flavor, and color. Because of this, new methods are needed to separate and characterize cereal proteins. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) offers several benefits to scientists working with cereal proteins. CE is a rapid, high resolution technique that produces little toxic waste. This article reviews the use of CE to analyze cereal proteins and demonstrates the application of CE separations of proteins for such things as differentiating cereal cultivars. This review will be useful to scientists working on cereal proteins and cereal chemistry in general as well as people working in the cereal industry such as millers, bakers, and plant breeders.

Technical Abstract: Cereal grains are important both nutritionally and economically in virtually every country of the world. Cereal grains can be made into a wide range of human foods and are also important animal feed components. In addition to nutritional roles, cereal grains often play important functional roles in foods. Although all the biochemical components of cereal grains are important, cereal proteins have major functional roles in foods. Cereal proteins are complex mixtures of proteins that are often difficult to solubilize and separate. Because of this, a wide range of analytical techniques have been used to separate and characterize cereal proteins. One of the newest techniques used to separate these challenging proteins is high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE). This review covers the development of methods to separate cereal proteins by HPCE.