F. L. Silva

TGF beta2 concentration in dairy products: the effect of processing on its concentration

This work aims to study the effect of processing on the concentration of TGF-β2, evaluating pasteurization, membrane separation, as well as vacuum evaporation and spray drying. The TGF-β content in each sample of milk taken after each processing step has been quantified by ELISA kit. Furthermore, chemical composition analysis has been performed. TGF-β2 has shown a strong correlation (0.95) with the protein content in the samples. There is no influence of pasteurization on the concentration of TGF-β2, although pasteurization affects the distribution of TGF-β2 in the whey protein fractions and casein, which can be observed in the reduction of TGF-β2 content in whey as heat treatment is applied. This trend is unlike that of microfiltration, where it has been observed that TGF-β2 was equally distributed between casein and whey proteins. The concentration obtained by vacuum evaporation showed a concentration factor less than 1 for TGF-β2 once the constituents other than TGF-β2 became more concentrated. However, spray drying showed values greater than 1, demonstrating that TGF-β2 is concentrated in greater quantities than other solid constituents of the samples.