HISTOLOGICAL STUDIES OF BREWERY SPENT GRAINS IN DIETARY PROTEIN FORMULATION IN DONRYU RATS

The increasing production of large tonnage of products in brewing industries continually generates lots of solid waste which includes spent grains, surplus yeast, malt sprout and cullet. The disposal of spent grains is often a problem and poses major health and environmental challenges, thereby making it imminently necessary to explore alternatives for its management. This paper focuses on investigating the effects of Brewery Spent Grain formulated diet on haematological, biochemical, histological and growth performance of Donryu rats. The rats were allocated into six dietary treatment groups and fed on a short-term study with diet containing graded levels of spent grains from 0, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 100% weight/weight. The outcome demonstrated that formulated diet had a positive effect on the growth performance of the rats up to levels of 6% inclusions, while the haematological and biochemical evaluation revealed that threshold limit should not exceed 9% of the grain. However, the histological study on the liver indicated a limit of 3% inclusion in feed without serious adverse effect. Thus invariably showing that blend between ranges 1-3% is appropriate for the utilization of the waste in human food without adverse effect on the liver organ. The economic advantage accruing from this waste conversion process not only solves problem of waste disposal but also handle issues of malnutrition in feeding ration

A comparison of pilot-scale supersonic direct steam injection to conventional steam infusion and tubular heating systems for the heat treatment of protein-enriched skim milk-based beverages

peer-reviewedDirect supersonic steam injection, direct steam infusion, and indirect tubular heating were each applied to protein-enriched skim milk-based beverages with 4, 6 and 8% (w/w) total protein, and the effect of final heat temperature on the physical properties of these beverages was investigated. Supersonic steam injection resulted in significantly lower levels of denaturation of β-lactoglobulin (34.5%), compared to both infusion (76.3%) and tubular (97.1%) heating technologies. Viscosity, particle size and accelerated physical stability of formulations did not differ significantly between the heating technologies, while noticeable colour differences due to heat treatment (mainly attributed to increasing b* value) were observed, particularly for tubular heating. Overall, the extent of protein denaturation in high-protein dairy products was significantly influenced by the particular heating technology applied. The application of supersonic steam injection technology, with rapid heating and high shear characteristics, may enable differenciated product characteristics for ready-to-drink ambient-delivery high-protein dairy beverages. Industrial relevance: The design and application of novel direct supersonic steam injection technology was comprehensively studied and found to provide significant benefits over direct steam infusion and indirect tubular heating technologies for skim milk-based protein beverages. This type of injection heating system resulted in heat-treated formulations with lower levels of denatured whey proteins, compared to tubular and infusion heating, offering an alternative opportunity to the industry in terms of producing shelf-stable dairy protein beverages

The ReFOLD assay for protein formulation studies and prediction of protein aggregation during long-term storage

The formulation of novel therapeutic proteins is a challenging task which aims at finding formulation conditions that will minimize protein degradation during long-term storage. One particularly important and difficult-to-predict protein degradation pathway is the so-called non-native aggregation. The qualitative and quantitative prediction of the latter has been a subject of extensive research over the past two decades. An increasing body of evidence shows that the widely-used short-term biophysical techniques cannot accurately rank formulation conditions in order of their effect on the aggregation during long-term storage of some therapeutic proteins, e.g. monoclonal antibodies. Here we suggest a novel approach for the selection of formulation conditions that will suppress the formation of protein aggregates during long-term storage. We postulate that conditions (i.e. pH, buffer type, ionic strength) that reduce the isothermal aggregation of various denaturant-induced partially folded protein species will be conditions that impede protein aggregation during long-term storage. To test our hypothesis, we developed an isothermal microdialysis-based unfolding/refolding assay, named ReFOLD, which we use to induce moderate aggregation of partially folded proteins. Next, we assessed the relative monomer yield after isothermal unfolding/refolding of two monoclonal antibodies, each formulated in 12 different conditions. Using the proposed approach, we were able to accurately rank the formulations in order of their effect on the amount of protein aggregates detected after storage for 12 months at 4 °C and 25 °C, while widely-used stability-indicating parameters like protein melting and aggregation onset temperatures failed to provide accurate predictive formulation rankings

Screening tests for Disease Risk Haplotype Segments in Genome by Use of Permutation

The haplotype association analysis has been proposed to capture the collective behavior of sets of variants by testing the association of each set instead of individual variants with the disease. Such an analysis typically involves a list of unphased multiple-locus genotypes with potentially sparse frequencies in cases and controls. It starts with inferring haplotypes from genotypes followed by a haplotype co-classification and marginal screening for disease-associated haplotypes. Unfortunately, phasing uncertainty may have a strong effects on the haplotype co-classification and therefore on the accuracy of predicting risk haplotypes. Here, to address the issue, we propose an alternative approach: In Stage 1, we select potential risk genotypes instead of co-classification of the inferred haplotypes. In Stage 2, we infer risk haplotypes from the genotypes inferred from the previous stage. The performance of the proposed procedure is assessed by simulation studies and a real data analysis. Compared to the existing multiple Z-test procedure, we find that the power of genome-wide association studies can be increased by using the proposed procedure

Characteristic of silicon doped diamond like carbon thin films on surface properties and human serum albumin adsorption

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings are useful for creating biocompatible surfaces for medical implants. DLC and silicon doped DLC have been synthesised using plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD). The effects of surface morphology on the interaction of human serum albumin (HSA) with doped and undoped DLC films have been investigated using a range of surface analysis techniques using Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Raman spectra of doped DLC show that silicon doped DLC reduces the growth range of the ID/IG ratio, with a significant red-shift of the G peak position. Following exposure to protein, for undoped DLC the peaks at 1664 cm−1 and around 1241 cm−1 can be attributed to amide I and III, respectively, with an increase in the surface morphology of the surfaces giving some indication of the protein structure on the surfaces. Results indicate that HSA exhibit the majority of β-sheet during the adsorption on the surfaces. The results showed that the silicon incorporation DLC tends to increase of surface roughness and the adsorbed level of HSA is higher with higher levels of silicon doping of the DLC. Therefore, doping DLC may provide a method of controlling the adsorption of protein