Initial stage of cheese production: a molecular modeling study of bovine and camel chymosin complexed with peptides from the chymosin-sensitive region of κ-casein

J Agric Food Chem. 2011 May 25;59(10):5636-47. doi: 10.1021/jf104898w. Epub 2011 May 3.

Abstract

Bovine chymosin has long been the preferred enzyme used to coagulate cow's milk, in the initial stage of cheese production, during which it cleaves a specific bond in the milk protein κ-casein. Recently, camel chymosin has been shown to have a 70% higher clotting activity toward cow's milk and, moreover, to cleave κ-casein more selectively. Bovine chymosin, on the other hand, is a poor clotting agent toward camel's milk. This paper reports a molecular modeling study aimed at understanding this disparity, based on homology modeling and molecular dynamics simulations using peptide fragments of κ-casein from cow and camel in both bovine and camel chymosin. The results show that the complex between bovine chymosin and the fragment of camel κ-casein is indeed less stable in the binding pocket. The results also indicate that this in part may be due to charge repulsion between a lysine residue in bovine chymosin and an arginine residue in the P4 position of camel κ-casein.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Camelus*
  • Caseins / chemistry*
  • Caseins / metabolism
  • Cattle*
  • Cheese / analysis*
  • Chymosin / chemistry*
  • Chymosin / metabolism
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Peptide Fragments / chemistry*
  • Sequence Alignment

Substances

  • Caseins
  • Peptide Fragments
  • Chymosin