Soy Protein - Role in The Growth of The Soybean Plant

Role in The Growth of The Soybean Plant

Soy protein is generally regarded as stored protein held in discrete particles called "protein bodies" estimated to contain at least 60% to 70% of the total protein within the soybean. This protein is important to the growth of new soybean plants, and when the soybean germinates, the protein will be digested, and the released amino acids will be transported to locations of seedling growth. Legume proteins, such as soy and pulses, belong to the globulin family of seed storage proteins called legumin (11S globulin fraction) and vicilins (7S globulin), or in the case of soybeans, glycinin and beta-conglycinin. Grains contain a third type of storage protein called gluten or "prolamines". Edestin, a legumin class reserve protein from hemp seeds have six identical subunits. There is one hexameric protein in the rhombohedral unit cell.

Soybeans also contain biologically active or metabolic proteins, such as enzymes, trypsin inhibitors, hemagglutinins, and cysteine proteases very similar to papain. The soy cotyledon storage proteins, important for human nutrition, can be extracted most efficiently by water, water plus dilute alkali (pH 7–9), or aqueous solutions of sodium chloride (0.5–2 M) from dehulled and defatted soybeans that have undergone only a minimal heat treatment so the protein is close to being native or undenatured. Soybeans are processed into three kinds of modern protein-rich products: soy flour, soy concentrate, and soy isolate.

For the 11S protein, glycinin, to fold properly into its hexagonal shape(containing six subunits, a hexamer), it must undergo a very limited proteolysis in a manner similar to the cleavage of a peptide from proinsulin to obtain active insulin.

Read more about this topic:  Soy Protein

Famous quotes containing the words role in, role, growth and/or plant:

    So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    American feminists have generally stressed the ways in which men and women should be equal and have therefore tried to put aside differences.... Social feminists [in Europe] ... believe that men and society at large should provide systematic support to women in recognition of their dual role as mothers and workers.
    Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)

    A revolution is not the overturning of a cart, a reshuffling in the cards of state. It is a process, a swelling, a new growth in the race. If it is real, not simply a trauma, it is another ring in the tree of history, layer upon layer of invisible tissue composing the evidence of a circle.
    Kate Millett (b. 1934)

    I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the repose of untamableness. I dream of looking abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from some mountain-side,... to be nature looking into nature with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the sky. From some such recess I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts forth leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)