Abstract
Skin-whitening ingredients are a very important part of the development of functional cosmetics and a wide variety of raw materials are used. Tyrosinase is a key enzyme in the animal melanogenic pathway that is the rate-limiting step for the production of melanin. Several synthetic and naturally occurring tyrosinase inhibitors have been studied for skin-whitening. The development of natural agents is becoming more important due to the disadvantages of synthetics such as high cytotoxicity, insufficient penetration power, and low activity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the total phenol content (TPC), antioxidant, and tyrosinase inhibition activity of mealworm (Tenebrio molitor larvae) extract, and the subsequent optimization of the extraction condition using statistically-based optimization. The major extraction variables extraction temperature, time, and ethanol concentration were optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). The results showed that optimum extraction temperature of 88.1 °C, extraction time of 43.7 min, and ethanol concentration of 72.0 v/v%, provided the predicted maximum levels of total phenolic compounds (TPC) of 5.41 mg GAE/g dry weight (DW) and tyrosinase inhibition activity (TIA) of 82.4%. From the validation experiment, 5.61 ± 0.2 mg GAE/g dry weight (DW), tyrosinase inhibition of 79.6 ± 3.3%, and radical scavenging activity of 91.8 ± 5.1 μg/mL were found and showed to be very similar to the predicted values. These results suggest that mealworm has great potential as a source of bioactive compounds which could be used as cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical agents.
Highlights
The world’s rapid population growth resulted in a global food shortage, especially of animal protein sources [1]
This result indicates that the extraction tendency of total phenol content (TPC) and tyrosinase inhibition activity (TIA) is uncoupled and different optimum conditions are expected to exist
Since it was found that the quadratic model for the experimental data better than other models, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the best correlation between independent variables and dependent variables (TPC and TIA) of the quadratic models
Summary
The world’s rapid population growth resulted in a global food shortage, especially of animal protein sources [1]. Other factors such as competition between humans and livestock over crops and environmental problems are raising concerns, so insects are gaining more attention as an alternative protein and an alternative source of value-added materials [2,3]. Insects have a lower proportion of cholesterol and are a good source of vital minerals, vitamins, lipids, and carbohydrates [4,5]. Despite the advantages of consuming alternative proteins, eating insects is still considered socially uncomfortable and such issues remain to be solved. There are more benefits for using edible insects for cosmetic materials in skin care products than for food
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