Studies on Rice Glutelin

In order to isolate and purify glutelin from rice endosperm, Kondo’s method had been widely employed. However, we found that this method was not sufficient to prepare pure glutelin for structural studies, because glutelin prepared by this method would be easily contaminated with some impurities such as carbohydrates, nucleic acids and alkalidenatured albumin and globulin. Then we introduced a new method, which essentially involved the simultaneous extraction of impurities and precipitation of glutelin at pH 10.0 in the presence of sodium chloride. The purified glutelin by this new method had high nitrogen-content, 17.9%, and very low contents of phosphorus, pentose (nucleic acid) and hexose. The N-terminal analysis by FDNB method also revealed that the preparation was chemically pure and glycine was the only one detectable terminus of glutelin.