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α-Lactalbumin

  • Chapter
Advanced Dairy Chemistry—1 Proteins

Abstract

α-Lactalbumin (α-La) is a unique protein component of milk whey in all mammalian subdivisions, the eutherians, marsupials and monotremes. Following its early isolation by Sørensen and Sørensen (1939), α-La was used extensively as a model in numerous studies of the biophysical properties of proteins (see McKenzie, 1967 for a review of this earlier work). Interest in α-La was enhanced in the late 1960s by the discovery of its biochemical function as a specificity regulator in lactose synthase (Brodbeck and Ebner, 1966; Brodbeck et al., 1967; Brew et al., 1968), and the observation that it is homologous with the well-characterized type-c lysozymes (Lz) (Brew and Campbell, 1967; Brew et al., 1967). It was not until 1980 that α-La was found to be a calcium metalloprotein (Hiroaka et al., 1980) in which the calcium ion has been found to have an unusual crucial role in folding and structure.

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Brew, K. (2003). α-Lactalbumin. In: Fox, P.F., McSweeney, P.L.H. (eds) Advanced Dairy Chemistry—1 Proteins. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8602-3_8

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