Adsorption characteristics of tryptic fragments of bovine β- lactoglobulin on a stainless steel surface

As a strategy for the analysis of the mode of protein adsorption onto stainless steel surfaces, peptides obtained by tryptic digestion of bovine β-lactoglobulin were subjected to adsorption experiments after identification of their primary structures. In the presence of 1 mM KOH, the peptides were scarcely adsorbed onto the surfaces of stainless steel particles from the peptide mixture. The adsorption experiments on isolated peptides showed that the affinities of the peptides for stainless steel surfaces in the presence of 1 mM HNO₃ were significantly different from each other. Peptides without any acidic amino acid residues were scarcely adsorbed onto the surface, whereas some peptides with acidic amino acid residues were found to be irreversibly adsorbed onto the surfaces in the acidic pH region. As for the latter peptides, the amount adsorbed on the surface increased with increasing ionic strength. These results indicated that the carboxyl groups on the side chains of the peptides play an important role in the adsorption. Furthermore, the adsorption behavior of β-lactoglobulin itself was found to be very similar to that of one of the latter peptides.