MONITORING CHEDDAR CHEESE RIPENING BY CHEMICAL INDEXES OF PROTEOLYSIS .3. IDENTIFICATION OF SEVERAL HIGH-MOLECULAR-MASS PEPTIDES

Two Cheddar cheeses from two different production plants were ripened over 24 weeks at 10-degrees-C and then analysed for peptides soluble in citrate buffer at pH 4.6 by reversed-phase (RP)-HPLC. Thirteen peptides with a chain length of between 35 and 65 amino acid residues and molecular masses between 3800 and 7400 were isolated and assigned to the corresponding amino acid sequences of the casein fractions via Edman degradation and amino acid composition. All peptides were fragments of the region K29-S96 of beta-caseine A1 and A2, and eleven of them had M93 as the C-terminal. The amounts and proportions of these peptides varied differently during ripening of the two cheeses, so they may be suitable markers for characterizing the stage of ripening.