Plant and bacterial proteases: A key towards improving meat tenderization, a mini review

Abstract

Meat consumers are very concerned about the quality and tenderness of meat. Meat tenderness generally depends upon connective tissue, sarcomere length, and the proteolytic potential of muscle. Different physical and chemical methods are used to assess the tenderness of meat. Protease treatment is an efficient method used for meat tenderization. In the food industry, different proteases such as bromelain, papain, ficin, actinidin, and calpain are widely used for proteolytic degradation, to improve meat tenderness. Two structural components determine the toughness of meat, connective tissues composed of structural proteins and post-mortem changes in the sarcomere. Proteases play an important role in degrading the structural proteins in the connective tissues, thus reducing toughness of meat. Bacterial proteases are also used in meat tenderization. Bacterial proteases show effective proteolytic degradation of elastin and collagen, but have negligible or no effect in degrading myofibrillar proteins. The present review highlight the importance of plant and bacterial enzymes with special reference to meat tenderization.