Nutritional Effects of Mechanically Deboned Chicken Meat and Soybean Proteins Cross-linking by Microbial Transglutaminase

Abstract

This work studied the nutritional effects of protein cross-linking as mediated by microbial transglutaminase (TGase) using rats as biological models. Rats were divided into six groups that received diets containing casein (standard protein diet), cross-linked meat protein (CMP), meat protein (MP), cross-linked soy protein, or soy protein (SP) as the protein sources of their diets, which were compared against an aproteic diet (basal diet). The cross-linking process showed a significant (p < 0.05) impact on the true digestibility (TD) of meat and SPs, decreasing it for the first and increasing it for the second. As a consequence, the TD of modified SP became similar to that observed for CMP, although, the biological value, net protein utilization, net protein ratio, and protein retention efficiency values of meat and SPs were not affected in the process. These results suggest that the use of TGase for the reticulation of isolated SP can improve its nutritional quality.