PROLAT

Development of milk with an improved protein profile.

 

Description

Develop and make available to the market a new type of milk different from the products on the market, intended for consumers with difficulty in consuming traditional milk, providing a product with improved digestibility, without the need to resort to extensive technological treatments or formulation, but exploiting the natural variability of dairy cattle populations, also because of of new food and nutritional trends.
Implement an analytical protocol to differentiate milk that presents different variants of beta-casein. Characterize the new milk with a modified protein profile to verify its effects on the functionality of the digestive system, through specific in vivo tests on animal models and in vitro tests on cell lines, by establishing research contracts with two research organizations (CNR and CREA) that have specific expertise in this field.

Why is it important?

This is a product with a different casein profile (containing only beta-casein A2) that could benefit consumers who feel heavy after drinking milk. The milk in question is unprocessed and comes from cows selectively bred with a genetic makeup that is naturally A2A2, allowing them to produce beta-casein only in the A2 variant, which is the oldest, from which the A1 variant differentiated through mutation.
The difference between the two lies in the sequence of the 229 amino acids that make them up: at position 67, A1 has the amino acid histidine, while A2 has proline. Due to this difference in sequence, the two proteins break down at different points during digestion. For A1, the cleavage, facilitated by the histidine at position 67, leads to the formation of beta-casomorphin-7, which has been documented to have slowing effects on digestion.