Abstract
Heavy metal ions, the common contaminants in grain growing environment and food processing, pose an important effect on the aggregation behavior of food proteins. In this work, the effects of heavy metal ions Zn2+, Cd2+ and Cu2+ on rice protein (RP) fibrillation were investigated, and the relationship between fibril structures, morphology and functional properties was also discussed. Specifically, Zn2+ and Cd2+ not only facilitated the formation of rice protein fibrils (RPFs) by promoting the generation of β-sheet structures (57.3% and 54.4%, respectively), but also transformed the fibrils into long and straight rigid structures. Cu2+ led to more disordered structures (23.1%), inhibited RP fibrillation and induced branching/tangling structure. The result of the intrinsic fluorescence showed that Cu2+ could obviously decrease the fluorescence intensity of RPFs, indicating that the microenvironment of RP was changed by Cu2+. Correspondingly, Zn2+ and Cd2+ improved the solubility, emulsifying and foaming properties of RPFs, while Cu2+ enhanced the rheological properties.
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