β-Lactoglobulin (LG) is suspected to enhance or modulate human immune responses. Moreover, LG is also hypothesized to increase human cell proliferation. However, these potential functions of LG have not been directly or thoroughly addressed. In this study, we demonstrated that LG is a potent stimulator of cell proliferation using a hybridoma cell (a splenocyte fused with a myeloma cell) model. LG's ability to promote cell proliferation was lost when the protein is denatured. To further investigate the influence of LG's conformation on cell proliferation, we chemically modified LG by either carboxymethylation (CM) or acetylation and observed significantly reduced cell proliferation when the protein structure was altered. Furthermore, we proved that LG enhances cell proliferation via receptor-mediated membrane IgM receptor. These data indicated that nondenatured LG is the major component in milk that modulates cell proliferation. Collectively, our study showed that LG plays a key role in enhancing immune responses by promoting cell proliferation through IgM receptor.

A purple-spore, rhizosphere-inhabiting nematophagous fungus, further identified as Paecilomyces lilacinus, was found to grow on chitosanase-detecting plate. An induced endochitosanase having a molecular mass of 23 kDa was purified from the culture medium by a single cation-exchange column-chromatography step. Its optimum pH, optimum temperature and pI were found to be 6.0, 50 degrees C and 8.3 respectively. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of the purified enzyme was partially determined. On the basis of the partial sequence XQLPANLXXIYD and the BLAST results, the purified chitosanase was classified as a new member of the family 75 glycohydrolases. Complete hydrolysis of 95% deacetylated chitosan by the isolated chitosanase released chitotriose, chitotetraose and chitopentaose as the major hydrolytic products. Two oligosaccharides, which were further determined to be GlcN-GlcN-GlcNAc and GlcNAc-GlcN-GlcN-GlcNAc by chemical methylation followed by liquid chromatography-tandem MS analysis, were obtained after the denaturation of the purified chitosanase. This is the first documented finding that chitosanase can be produced in a Paecilomyces strain and that it has binding affinity for specific N-acetylated oligosaccharides.

No abstract