Molecular Mechanism for Improving Emulsification Efficiency of Soy Glycinin by Glycation with Soy Soluble Polysaccharide

Glycation with carbohydrates has been considered to be an effective strategy to improve the emulsifying properties of plant storage globulins, but the knowledge is inconsistent and even contradictory. This work reported that the glycation with soy soluble polysaccharide (SSPS) progressively improved the emulsification efficiency of soy glycinin (SG) in a degree-of-glycation (DG)-dependent manner. The glycation occurred in both the acidic (A) and basic (B) polypeptides to a similar extent. The physicochemical and structural properties of glycated SG samples with different DG values of 0-35% were characterized. The emulsifying properties of unglycated and glycated SG were performed on the emulsions at an oil fraction of 0.3 and a protein concentration in the aqueous phase, produced using microfluidization as the emusification process. The glycation with increasing the DG led to a progressive decrease in solubility and surface hydrophobicity but remarkably increased the magnitude of ζ-potential. Dynamic latter scattering and spectroscopic results showed that the glycation resulted in a gradual dissociation of the 11S-form SG at the quaternary level (into different [AB] subunits), in a DG-dependent way, while their tertiary ([AB] subunits) and secondary structure were slightly affected. Besides the emulsification efficiency, the glycation progressively accelerated the droplet flocculation and facilitated the adsorption of the proteins at the interface and formation of bridged emulsions. The results demonstrated that the improvement of the emulsification efficiency of SG by the glycation with SSPS was largely attributed to the enhanced conformation flexibility at the [AB] subunit level as well as facilitated formation of bridged emulsions. It was also confirmed that once the glycated SG adsorbed at the interface, it would readily dissociated into subunits; the dissociated [AB] subunits exhibited an outstanding Pickering stabilization. The findings would be of importance for providing new knowledge about the molecular mechanism for the modification of emulsifying properties of oligomeric globulins by the glycation with polysaccharides.