Recovery of an antibacterial peptide fraction from snow crab by-products hydrolysate by electrodialysis with ultrafiltration membranes

By-products and surpluses from food industries could generate peptides with great interest for food formulation. Hence, the separation and concentration of bioactive peptides from natural sources becomes increasingly attractive to the food industry [1]. Recently, a snow crab byproducts hydrolysate showed antibacterial activity [2]. This activity was due to an antibacterial peptide of about 800 Da [2]. However, the antibacterial activity was only detected at high peptide concentration. Consequently, peptide hydrolysate has to be fractionated to obtain peptides in a more purified form. Electrodialysis with ultrafiltration membranes (EDUF), developed and patented in 2005 [3], allowed separation of molecules from a complex mixture according to their charge and their molecular weights. EDUF had already successfully demonstrated the recovery of interesting peptide fractions [4, 5]. Hence, the aim of this work was to recover and concentrate the active antibacterial fraction.