Institute of Experimental Botany AS CR
We are Discovering the Plant World

Franěk, František
JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY 52 [13]: 4097-4100, 2004

Keywords: spelt wheat (Triticum aestivum subsp spelta); gluten; peptides
Abstract: The enzymic hydrolysate of gluten from spelt wheat (Triticum aestivum subsp. spelta), an ancient protein-rich wheat subspecies, was subjected to repeated chromatography runs on the small pore size exclusion chromatography matrix, Biogel P-2. Two small peptide fractions were purified by rechromatography. The amino acid analyses carried out upon total hydrolysis of these fractions have shown a very high proportion of glutamic acid/glutamine, leucine, and methionine. The biological activity of the peptide fractions was tested on a model hybridoma at a concentration range from 0.02 to 0.2%. The most striking effect of peptide fractions, apparent even at the lowest concentrations tested, was a significantly higher persistence of viable cells on day 6, i.e., at the decline phase of the cultures. Culture viability values in the presence of peptide fractions were 64-74%, in comparison with 56% in the control culture. The results of this work are consistent with the concept that peptide molecules may act as antiapoptotic agents, survival factors, rather than serving as metabolic substrates. IEB authors: bývalý zaměstnanec