The Monosodium Glutamate Story: The Commercial Production of MSG and Other Amino Acids

Abstract

In this article I present some parts of the "story" of MSG that might be of most interest to chemists, chemistry teachers, and their students. HistoryGlutamic acid was first isolated as a pure substance in 1866 by the German chemist Ritthausen through the acidic hydrolysis of gliadin, a component of wheat gluten. It was not until 1908, however, that the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda found that glutamic acid was responsible for the flavor-enhancing properties of the kelplike seaweed, "konbu", or Laminaria Japonica, that had been used for many centuries in Japan in the preparation of soup stocks. By extracting 40 kilograms of the seaweed with hot water, Ikeda obtained 30 grams of (S )-glutamic acid, which he then identified as the taste-enhancing component of konbu. Ikeda immediately patented a process for isolating monosodium glutamate from wheat flour, and in 1909 the first monosodium glutamate was produced commercially under the trade name Ajinomoto (Aji no moto; "at the origin of flavor").Glutamic acid has now been isolated from innumerable vegetable sources, of which the most practically useful have included wheat gluten, soybean meal, casein, and the residue from the Steffen process for the production of beet sugar, the so-called "Steffen waste". The preparation of (S )-glutamic acid from wheat gluten is described in Organic Syntheses, Collective Volume 1 (1).Since 1908 the sodium salt of glutamic acid, or MSG, has come into use around the world as an additive, or seasoning, to enhance the flavor of foods. MSG is usually used in combination with salt, and, in general, a suitable quantity of MSG is 10-20% of the quantity of salt to be added. The connection between MSG and taste is described in more detail below. Commercial Production of Amino Acids(S )-Glutamic acid, relative to other pure amino acids, is produced in the largest quantities around the world. Its two closest competitors are (S )-lysine, and (R,S )-methionine, as indicated in Table 1.

Enzyme-Triggered Cargo Release from Methionine Sulfoxide Containing Copolypeptide Vesicles

“…13 The segment lengths were based on those previously found to promote vesicle formation using other amino acids, 8,9,11 and phenylalanine was incorporated within the rod-like, permanently hydrophobic leucine segment to enhance membrane flexibility. Due to its use in animal feeds, more methionine is produced chemically than any other amino acid, 27 which lowers its cost and makes this route a very economical process for synthesis of amphiphilic copolypeptides. as determined by optical microscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) (Figure 3a,b).…”

Use of Methionine Alkylation to Prepare Cationic and Zwitterionic Block Copolypeptide Vesicles

“…[17] Subsequent alkylation of this hydrophobic precursor in water, using either iodomethane or iodoacetic acid as model alkylating agents, directly gave the desired amphiphilic sulfonium derivatives, M M 65 (L 0.5 /F 0.5 ) 20 or M C 65 (L 0.5 /F 0.5 ) 20 , in high yield and purity, respectively (Scheme 1, see SI). In addition, due to its use in animal feeds, more methionine is produced chemically than any other amino acid, [18] which lowers its cost and makes this route a very economical process for synthesis of ionic amphiphilic copolypeptides. followed by dialysis gave polydisperse, unilamellar vesicles with average diameters of a few microns, [5,12] as determined by optical microscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) (Figure 1a-d).…”

Biotechnology in the Production of Pharmaceutical Industry Ingredients: Amino Acids

“…Biotechnological production processes have been used for industrial production of amino acids for about 50 years now (1,3,4,5,9,10,12,14,17,19,20,21,24,27,28,32,33,34,35,42,43,44,52,58).…”

“…the advantage of chemical synthesis is that it can be carried out on a very large scale, and often in a continuous way (4). its major disadvantage is that it typically gives a racemic mixture of Land D-forms of amino acids.…”