North Pacific krill Euphausia pacifica protein recovered by salt water treatment and its thermal gel-forming ability

Abstract

North Pacific krill Euphausia pacifica has very low commercial value in Japan due to its small size and high autolytic activity. To utilize the krill as a raw material of gel products, a new method to recover the krill protein by salt water treatment was investigated. The krill was homogenized with NaClaq (final conc. 4%) and then diluted to 10 times (v/v) to obtain precipitate as recovered protein. Both Ca-ATPase and Mg-ATPase activities of the recovered protein were high. Thermal gels from the recovered krill protein were obtained when heated at 80- 90°C, whereas intense proteolysis was observed in the SDS-PAGE pattern. These results suggest that the new method to recover North Pacific krill protein by salt water treatment is useful, and that the krill protein has gel- forming ability.