Radiolytic Denaturation of Bovine Milk Proteins with Fast Neutron Bombardment

This experiment was conducted to analyze the feasibility of neutron irradiation as a method for reducing milk allergens. In a temperature-controlled environment, whole milk was irradiated with 4 MeV fast neutron irradiation from a 5 Ci Pu-Be source. After irradiation, the samples were treated with Bradford reagent as an assay. The final concentrations from the Bradford Assay indicated protein degradation rather than denaturation leading to further testing with discontinuous polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The gel electrophoresis results determined that most proteins had been degraded into unidentifiable proteins components. The remaining main allergenic proteins, alpha-casein and beta-lactoglobulin, decreased by a factor of 3 and 13 respectively after 30 hours of irradiation in an inverse exponential manner. The results strongly indicate that the allergenicity of milk allergens can be reduced by fast neutron irradiation.