Abstract
In order to promote the practical utilization of gluten meal, which is a by-product of corn processing for food materials, the optimal conditions for preparation of zein from gluten meal were determined. The most effective extraction of zein from gluten meal was obtained by twice-repeated extraction of the 3% NaCl-extracted residue of the meal with 10 volumes of 60% ethanol at 60°C for 30min. Then the zein was recovered rapidly at a high yield from the ethanol extracts by dropping into more than one volume of 1% NaCl solution. Sephacryl S-200 column chromatography and SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed that the molecular properties of the zein obtained from gluten meal by the above-mentioned method were almost the same as those of zein extracted from raw corn seeds.
