New molecular features of cowpea bean (Vigna unguiculata, l. Walp) beta-vignin

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, Ederlan de Souza
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Capraro, Jessica, Sessa, Fabio, Magni, Chiara, Demonte, Aureluce [UNESP], Consonni, Alessandro, Neves, Valdir Augusto [UNESP], Cilli, Eduardo Maffud [UNESP], Duranti, Marcello, Scarafoni, Alessio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09168451.2017.1419855; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/163885
• topic: Vigna ssp; vicilin proteins; beta-vignin; glycosylation; metal ion binding

Cowpea seed -vignin, a vicilin-like globulin, proved to exert various health favourable effects, including blood cholesterol reduction in animal models. The need of a simple scalable enrichment procedure for further studies for tailored applications of this seed protein is crucial. A chromatography-independent fractionation method allowing to obtain a protein preparation with a high degree of homogeneity was used. Further purification was pursued to deep the molecular characterisation of -vignin. The results showed: (i) differing glycosylation patterns of the two constituent polypeptides, in agreement with amino acid sequence features; (ii) the seed accumulation of a gene product never identified before; (iii) metal binding capacity of native protein, a property observed only in few other legume seed vicilins.