Quality of Cold Plasma Treated Casein Peptide Targeting SARS-CoV2: An In-silico Approach

Abstract

Abstract Raw cow milk being a highly nutritive but its contamination is one of the factors that has to be considered. Thermal treatment is generally adopted for decontamination of milk but at the same time it degrades the protein quality. Hence, there is a need for new treatment method with least processing technology to maintain the food quality. These challenges forced the scientist to introduce non-thermal technologies. The objective of the present study to elucidate the effect of optimized set up for plasma bubbling on casein protein and peptide with respect to raw cow milk. Structural characterization of casein was done using FTIR. The casein protein hydrophobicity was maintained well and Mascot result revealed a non-detrimental effect to α-s1casein peptide upon the treatment. Specifically, casein peptides are good source of ACE inhibitory peptides. While, ACE2 receptor is responsible for binding of SARS-CoV2. Therefore, this study implemented on most effective ACE inhibitory peptide (RYLGY) which was observed in Mascot analysis, for both control and treated sample arising from peak at 1267m/z in MALDI-TOF of α-s1-casein. The peptide was considered for in-silico docking approach against SARS-CoV2. Interestingly, ACE2-RBD-peptide complex showed good binding score, suggesting that the peptide molecule disturbed the complex formation.