Nature & Environment
Nutritional Gems Discovered In Milk Proteins: What Will This Mean For Development?
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Mar 16, 2015 07:15 PM EDT
New findings published in the Journal of Proteome Research suggest that human babies may need more of a nutritional boost from breast-milk proteins than infants of one of their closest primate relatives.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, developed a new technique that compared the proteome at detectable proteins of human milk with the proteome of the rhesus macaque monkey.
This is the first comprehensive macaque milk proteome study that newly identified 524 human milk proteins
"Human milk provides a recipe for human nutrition during the neonatal period," said principal investigator Danielle Lemay, a nutritional biologist at the UC Davis Genome Center, in a news release. "But because so much remains to be understood about milk's molecular composition, we developed a new technique for analyzing milk proteomics that overcomes earlier barriers," she said.
The researchers worked to identify 1,606 proteins in human milk and 518 proteins in rhesus macaque milk, including 88 milk proteins that were common in both the species but at different levels. Findings revealed that about 93 percent of the shared proteins were more abundant in human milk than in the macaque milk.
"The higher levels of these proteins in human milk are consistent with the well-established perspective that human babies, compared to other primate infants, are born at a slightly earlier stage of development and require higher levels of specific proteins that will nurture them as they mature," Lemay said.
She also noted that these proteins found at higher levels in human milk included specific proteins that are enriched in human brain tissues, suggesting that they may be involved in neurodevelopment.
"Proteins that appear to have neurodevelopmental significance for human babies will be key targets for future research focused on enhancing infant formula," Lemay concluded.
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First Posted: Mar 16, 2015 07:15 PM EDT
New findings published in the Journal of Proteome Research suggest that human babies may need more of a nutritional boost from breast-milk proteins than infants of one of their closest primate relatives.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, developed a new technique that compared the proteome at detectable proteins of human milk with the proteome of the rhesus macaque monkey.
This is the first comprehensive macaque milk proteome study that newly identified 524 human milk proteins
"Human milk provides a recipe for human nutrition during the neonatal period," said principal investigator Danielle Lemay, a nutritional biologist at the UC Davis Genome Center, in a news release. "But because so much remains to be understood about milk's molecular composition, we developed a new technique for analyzing milk proteomics that overcomes earlier barriers," she said.
The researchers worked to identify 1,606 proteins in human milk and 518 proteins in rhesus macaque milk, including 88 milk proteins that were common in both the species but at different levels. Findings revealed that about 93 percent of the shared proteins were more abundant in human milk than in the macaque milk.
"The higher levels of these proteins in human milk are consistent with the well-established perspective that human babies, compared to other primate infants, are born at a slightly earlier stage of development and require higher levels of specific proteins that will nurture them as they mature," Lemay said.
She also noted that these proteins found at higher levels in human milk included specific proteins that are enriched in human brain tissues, suggesting that they may be involved in neurodevelopment.
"Proteins that appear to have neurodevelopmental significance for human babies will be key targets for future research focused on enhancing infant formula," Lemay concluded.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone