Exposing soy proteins to alkaline conditions (pH 8-14), for various time periods (10-480 min) and temperatures (25-95 °C at 10 °C intervals), induced increasing racemization of L-amino acid residues to D isomers. Relative susceptibilities of most amino acids were correlated with a linear free energy relationship based on plots of the ratio of the logarithm of the rate of racemization of any amino acid to that of alanine vs. *, a parameter that measures electron-donating inductive effects of amino acid side chains. Heats and entropies of activation for selected amino acids were obtained from Arrhenius plots. The values for protein-bound amino acids are compared to corresponding values for free amino acids. Mechanistic rationalizations are offered to account for the observed influence of these variables on racemization kinetics. The possible relevance of these findings to food processing and nutrition is also discussed.
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