Novel insights from protein degradation: Deciphering the dynamic evolution of biogenic amines as a quality indicator in pork during storage

Abstract

Biogenic amines (BAs) have drawn great attention as important markers for monitoring food quality. However, the BAs content in protein degradation profiles during pork storage was inadequately investigated. In this work, the Longissimus lumborum and Breast and flank of pork were collected, and their peptides contents, free amino acids (FAAs) contents, BAs contents, and several characteristic physicochemical indexes were monitored during storage at 4 °C. As a result, the differences of nutritional components in the Longissimus lumborum and Breast and flank could not affect the shelf life of refrigerated pork. There are 161 small peptides in the Longissimus lumborum of pork identified by LC-MS. As verified, arginine, glutamic acid, valine, and alanine could serve as four indicative amino acids during protein degradation in pork, and the arginine degradation pathway is more complex. Redundancy analysis confirmed that putrescine and cadaverine were significantly related to the precursor FAAs content, and their sum value could be used as a novel quality indicator instead of the biogenic amine index (BAI). Finally, the above prediction was also verified by the other species (beef, mutton and chicken) to improve the index system of meat quality evaluation in cold chain logistics.