Proteolysis and Its Control Using Protease Inhibitors in Fish and Fish Products: A Review

Abstract

Texture is one of the food quality attributes affecting the consumer's acceptability and the market value. Fish and shellfish undergo weakening or softening of muscle, particularly during extended storage under inappropriate conditions. The phenomenon is governed by endogenous proteases, both digestive and muscle proteases. Proteases present in the gastrointestinal tract that leach out to muscle tissue can induce proteolysis of myofibrillar and collagenous proteins. Furthermore, the muscle proteins present in gels fabricated from fish or shellfish meat also encounter degradation during thermal processing. Endogenous heat-activated proteases strongly bind to muscle proteins and are activated during heating, thereby degrading myofibrillar proteins, which are abundant in muscle tissue. This deterioration of the proteins directly leads to a weakened gel with poor water-holding capacity. Both cysteine and serine proteases are responsible for the degradation of myofibrillar proteins in several aquatic animals. Effective pretreatment of fish and shellfish, as well as the use of food-grade protease inhibitors (PIs), have been implemented to inactivate endogenous muscle and digestive proteases. For this review, proteolysis of muscle proteins and its control by food-grade PIs are revisited. Improved and effective lowering of proteolysis should be gained, thereby maintaining the quality of fish and their products.

Effects of µ‐calpain oxidation on Coregonus peled myofibrillar protein degradation in vitro

“…Fish, as one of the foremost human consumption sources, can deteriorate during postmortem storage due to a variety of complex microbiological, physiological, chemical, and biochemical processes, resulting in a loss of freshness (Carrera, Canas, & Gallardo, 2013;Wu, Pu, & Sun, 2019). Endogenous proteases are reported to be involved in fish softening during early postmortem storage, which is critical to muscle quality (Ahmed, Donkor, Street, & Vasiljevic, 2015;Singh & Benjakul, 2018).…”

Effect of chitooligosaccharide from squid pen on gel properties of sardine surimi gel and its stability during refrigerated storage

“…To enhance the gel properties, a variety of additives with different functions have been incorporated into surimi. Some of them inhibit proteolysis (Quan & Benjakul, 2017;Singh & Benjakul, 2018), or induce protein cross-linking (Vate et al, 2015;Sae-Leaw et al, 2018). Phenolic compounds or hydrocolloids such as gellan have been used to enhance gel properties of surimi (Buamard et al, 2017;Petcharat & Benjakul, 2018).…”

Utilization of marine by-products for the recovery of value-added products

“…Fish by-products are highly perishable because of several chemical and biological changes that take place immediately after capture (Falch et al, 2007;Le Gouic et al, 2019;Vázquez et al, 2019). Moreover, during storage and transportation, the nutritional and sensory quality of these fish and their by-products may deteriorate due to the spoilage mediated by microbial and enzymatic reactions (Singh and Benjakul, 2018). In this connection, less attention has been paid to the preservation of by-products and hence conservation of their nutritional quality is one of the main challenges facing the industry.…”

“…In this connection, less attention has been paid to the preservation of by-products and hence conservation of their nutritional quality is one of the main challenges facing the industry. For instance, protease-mediated protein degradation should be controlled or minimized as a high degree of hydrolysis of raw materials may create bitter taste peptides (Singh and Benjakul, 2018;Alder-Nissen, 1984) and together with lipid peroxidation may cause variability in raw material (Alder-Nissen, 1984;Olsen et al, 2014). The acceptable levels of lipid and protein Utilization of marine by-products for the recovery of value-added products Shahidi et al hydrolysis are highly product specific, depending on the end use of products (Falch, et al, 2007;Guérard et al, 2005).…”