Recovery of Macromolecules of Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Importance from Soybean Hulls

CAMISCIA, PAOLA; PICÓ, GUILLERMO; WOITOVICH VALETTI, NADIA

Food Byproducts Management and Their Utilization

Apple Academic Press

Año: 2024; p. 265 - 284

Soybean is one of the main crops worldwide with a high planted area distributed mainly in the US, Brazil, and Argentina. The main destinations for these grains are the production of flour, oil, and pellets for animal feed. During the processing of soybeans for industrialization, residues are produced, one of them being the soybean hull (endocarp that covers the grain), which represents 2–8% of the total mass of the grain. Soy hull is made up of molecules that have high commercial value: 45% cellulose, 20% xylan, 15% pectin, 2% lignin, and 7–14% soluble proteins. Within the fraction of soluble proteins, there are a series of macromolecules of high biotechnological value, including soybean peroxidase, PR-5, extensins, and different types of protease inhibitors such as Bowman–Birk type inhibitors and the family of Kunitz inhibitors, both present in different isoforms. Taking into account that, in addition to the named proteins, there are in total more than 4000 known and unknown proteins with functions to be determined; the soybean hull is presented as an alternative source of different types of macromolecules. In recent years, different attempts have been made to recover proteins with biological activity at laboratory level using traditional protein purification methods: salting out, solvent, ion exchange chromatography, etc. This chapter presents different 254methodologies for the extraction and purification of some of the proteins present in the soybean hull using simple and nonpolluting methodologies with the potential to be scaled up.