Comparative Surface Engineering of Hydrated Silica for Flavourzyme Immobilization: Carboxyl Versus Dopamine Modulation for Enhanced Corn Peptide Debittering
摘要
This study introduces a comparative dual-modification strategy to advance Flavourzyme immobilization for sensory-directed applications. Carboxyl functionalization was newly developed and systematically evaluated alongside dopamine modification to elucidate surface chemistry-dependent performance. Carboxyl-modified hydrated silica (CHS) achieved 62.93% immobilization rate, whereas dopamine-modified hydrated silica (DHS) yielded 73.68% activity recovery. Notably, despite lower activity recovery, CHS-F outperformed DHS-F in debittering efficacy, reducing bitterness intensity of 1% (w/v) corn-peptide solution from 23.41 to 3.40 (85% decrease), compared to 5.81 for DHS-F and 4.10 for free enzyme. Both immobilized systems retained over 40% initial activity after ten cycles. These results demonstrate that carrier selection must be tailored to application objectives and establish surface-modified hydrated silica as an efficient, versatile platform for enzyme immobilization and sensory improvement of protein hydrolysates.