Nanoparticles and Nanofibers Obtained from Whey Protein Concentrate

MARTHA INES BURGOS; PAULA MURATORI; MARÍA ANGÉLICA PERILLO

Conferencia; VII Congreso Internacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de los Alimentos; 2018

Universidad Nacional de Córdoba y Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Provincia de Córdoba

In the context of a specific regional problem involving large quantities of waste from the dairy industry, with a significant environmental impact, we propose the reuse of one of the most abundant wastes, whey serum, rich in proteins, for the synthesis of biomaterials with biotechnological interest. Nanoparticles (Nps) synthesized from whey proteins concentrate (WPC) are of interest to be used as nano-transporters of molecules of low solubility or stability. On the other hand, with the same whey proteins self-aggregated into fibrilar nano-structures (Nfs), we proposed to synthesize protein films with various biotechnological applications. Here we have applied different protocols (with and without SDS, different incubation times (IT) at 85°C, desalting), and obtained Nps with WPC desalted in the absence of SDS and 1 hour IT. The NPs observed in TEM images were round and the diameters ranged between 20 and 150 nm, and the median was 44 nm. Nfs were obtained with desalted WPC in the presence of 1% SDS and 15 minutes IT. TEM images showed that the Nfs were mainly a supercoiled structure of 50 nm of thickness and 0.8 microm length approximately. Further characterization of the nanostructures was performed by analytical centrifugation, dynamic light scattering and N2 BET isotherms. This information will be usefull for the set up of drug adsorption/desorption experiments in a next research step. Acknowledgement: Financial support from Mincyt-Córdoba, CONICET and Secyt-UNC