Variable amounts of the two multienzymatic systems, trypsin-chymotrypsin-peptidase and pepsin-pancreatin, were utilized for evaluating the effect of Carioca's bean tannins on the digestibility of native and denatured phaseolin. Three methods were used for this evaluations: the pH drop method, measurement of degree of hydrolysis by the ninhidrin reaction, and by electrophoretic techniques. The results showed the adverse effect of condensed tannins on phaseolin digestibility, for the two multienzymatic systems. Ours results strongly indicate that phaseolin is dificult to be hydrolysed when saturated with tannins (5/20 tannin/protein ratio w/w or higher). Resistant peptides of 45.7KDa and 24KDa, that remained intact even after prolonged digestion were detected. This was due to the presence of very resistant tannin/protein complexes, which were not hydrolysed even at high enzyme concentrations. These results suggested the simultaneous reaction of tannins in a specific manner with more than one site on the protein, forming a protein-enzyme-tannin complex (PTE*) producing an undigestible phaseolin fraction.
Phaseolin; digestibility; beans; tanin-protein complexes
