Low-molecular weight protein profiling of genetically modified maize using fast liquid chromatography electrospray ionization and time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Use of Foodomics for Control of Food Processing and Assessing of Food Safety

Food chain, food safety, and food-processing sectors face new challenges due to globalization of food chain and changes in the modern consumer preferences. In addition, gradually increasing microbial resistance, changes in climate, and human errors in food handling remain a pending barrier for the efficient global food safety management. Consequently, a need for development, validation, and implementation of rapid, sensitive, and accurate methods for assessment of food safety often termed as foodomics methods is required. Even though, the growing role of these high-throughput foodomic methods based on genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic techniques has yet to be completely acknowledged by the regulatory agencies and bodies. The sensitivity and accuracy of these methods are superior to previously used standard analytical procedures and new methods are suitable to address a number of novel requirements posed by the food production sector and global food market.

Comparison of three modifications of fused-silica capillaries and untreated capillaries for protein profiling of maize extracts by capillary electrophoresis

In this work, capillary electrophoresis was applied to protein profiling of fractionated extracts of maize. A comparative study on the application of uncoated fused-silica capillaries and capillaries modified with hydroxypropylmethylcellulose, ω-iodoalkylammonium salt and a commercially available neutral capillary covalently coated with polyacrylamide is presented. The coating stability, background electrolyte composition, and separation efficiency were investigated. It was found that for zeins separation, the most stable and efficient was the capillary coated with polyacrylamide. Finally, the usefulness of these methods was studied for the differentiation of zein fraction in transgenic and nontransgenic maize. Zeins extracted from maize standards containing 0 and 5% m/m genetic modification were successfully separated, but slight differences were observed in terms of the zein content. Albumin and globulin fractions were analyzed with the use of unmodified fused-silica capillary with borate buffer pH 9 and the capillary coated with polyacrylamide with phosphate buffer pH 3. In the albumin fraction, additional peaks were found in genetically modified samples.