抄録
Fishery products are one of the most important food resources, like agriculture and livestock products. Use of fish meat as protein resources are classified as follows: (i) fresh food for cooking sashimi and grilled/ boiled seafood, (ii) processing raw materials for dried, salted, and canned foods, and (iii) industrial protein material such as frozen surimi. In any application, it is necessary to suppress protein denaturation at various stages from fish catch to the manufacturing process, because fish proteins are thermally and chemically less stable than that of other vertebrates. This special issue focuses on discussing the characteristics of fish meat protein and recent topics on the utilization of seafood protein. Five experts have contributed review articles.
Professor K. Konno (Hokkaido University) introduces the latest findings concerning biochemical properties of fish myofibrillar proteins in the review article, “Recent progress of fish myosin denaturation study”, where he summarized that an understanding of myosin denaturation upon heating and storage of fish meat is essential in evaluating the quality of fish muscle. Subsequently, Professor S. Mizuta (Fukui Prefectural University) explained the biochemical characteristics of collagen derived from a wide range of animals, from fish to marine invertebrates. He also introduced a novel matrix protein in the review article, “Proteins in the extracellular matrix”.
It is known that an appropriate handling of caught fish is important from the viewpoint of control of protein denaturation. Professor I. Kimura (Kagoshima University) explained the utilization of freshness evaluation indices, K value (indicating change in ATP related compounds in fish muscle) and Metmyoglobin ratio (indicating oxidation of myoglobin) in his review article, “Freshness control and improvement in quality of seafood”. He also introduced methods for producing high quality seafood by monitoring these freshness indices in the article. Additionally, Professor T. Ooizumi (Fukui Prefectural University) described the importance of controlling myofibrillar protein denaturation by measuring moisture behavior and protein qualitative change in fish meat during salting and drying in his review article, “Control of protein denaturation and its effect on quality of processed seafood”. This review suggests that monitoring of protein denaturation in food manufacturing processes provides useful information for quality improvement of seafood products.
In the last article of this special issue, “Improvement of food functionality of fish meat protein by introduction of glycosyl units”, I would like to introduce molecular modification technology, which has the potential to improve food characteristics and the health benefits of fish meat protein by improving the protein stability.
I hope this special issue contributes to research and development works of fish meat protein utilization.
