ANTIMUTAGENICITY OF A PARTIALLY FRACTIONATED MAILLARD REACTION-PRODUCT

The Maillard reaction product was prepared by refluxing glucose (0.5 m) and tryptophan (0.5 m) at pH 11.0 and 100-degrees-C for 10 h. It was further fractionated into different molecular weights (MW) below 1000, MW 1000-5000, MW 5000-10000, MW 10 000-30 000, MW 30 000-50 000 and MW above 50 000, by means of membrane filters. The characteristics and antimutagenicity of each glucose-tryptophan (GT) fraction were investigated. The trends of browning, reducing power, antioxidative activity and antimutagenicity of each GT fraction were generally of the order of MW above 5000 > unfractionated > MW below 1000. The antimutagenicity of each GT fraction exhibited a suitable correlation with these characteristics. The reducing power and antioxidative activity of each GT fraction could be concluded to play an important role in terms of its antimutagenicity. Additionally, an inhibitory mechanism of GT was due to a desmutagenic effect but not a bio-antimutagenic effect.