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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Gani, B. A. Ashwar (eds.), Food biopolymers: Structural, functional
and nutraceutical properties, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27061-2_9
Food Biopolymers: Structural, Functional,
and Nutraceutical Properties: Food
Proteins: An Overview
Nisar Ahmad Mir, Mamta Bharadwaj, Basharat Yousuf, Khalid Gul,
Charanjit Singh Riar, and Sukhcharan Singh
Introduction
Proteins are considered as the most abundant organic molecules in living systems
and are usually required in large quantities because they are the building blocks of
the body therefore a way more diverse in structure and function than any other class
of macromolecules. All proteins are made up of one or more chains of amino acids
which share a general structure consisting of a central carbon atom, also known as
alpha (α) carbon, bonded to an amino group (NH 2 ), a carboxylic group (COOH),
and a hydrogen atom (Fig. 1). Each amino acid has another atom or group of atoms
bonded to the central atom known as R group which determines the identity of the
amino acid. For instance, if R group is a hydrogen atom, then the amino acid is
glycine and if it is methyl (CH 3 ) the amino acid is alanine. Food quality is usually
determined by its nutritional and functional properties which primarily depend upon
the type of proteins present in the food material. Nutritional properties of proteins
include biological value, protein efficiency ratio; protein digestibility corrected
amino acid score, nutritional index, and corrected amino acid score (Mir et al.
2018). These nutritional properties depend upon the type of amino acids and their
bioavailability or in other words properties affecting the body after passage of food
N. A. Mir · M. Bharadwaj · C. S. Riar · S. Singh
Department of Food Engineering and Technology, SLIET, Sangrur, Punjab, India
B. Yousuf
Department of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences,
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
K. Gul (*)
Department of Food Process Engineering, National Institute of Technology,
Rourkela, Odisha, India
Department of Food Science and Engineering, School of Agriculture and Biology,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Gani, B. A. Ashwar (eds.), Food biopolymers: Structural, functional
and nutraceutical properties, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27061-2_9
Food Biopolymers: Structural, Functional,
and Nutraceutical Properties: Food
Proteins: An Overview
Nisar Ahmad Mir, Mamta Bharadwaj, Basharat Yousuf, Khalid Gul,
Charanjit Singh Riar, and Sukhcharan Singh
Introduction
Proteins are considered as the most abundant organic molecules in living systems
and are usually required in large quantities because they are the building blocks of
the body therefore a way more diverse in structure and function than any other class
of macromolecules. All proteins are made up of one or more chains of amino acids
which share a general structure consisting of a central carbon atom, also known as
alpha (α) carbon, bonded to an amino group (NH 2 ), a carboxylic group (COOH),
and a hydrogen atom (Fig. 1). Each amino acid has another atom or group of atoms
bonded to the central atom known as R group which determines the identity of the
amino acid. For instance, if R group is a hydrogen atom, then the amino acid is
glycine and if it is methyl (CH 3 ) the amino acid is alanine. Food quality is usually
determined by its nutritional and functional properties which primarily depend upon
the type of proteins present in the food material. Nutritional properties of proteins
include biological value, protein efficiency ratio; protein digestibility corrected
amino acid score, nutritional index, and corrected amino acid score (Mir et al.
2018). These nutritional properties depend upon the type of amino acids and their
bioavailability or in other words properties affecting the body after passage of food
N. A. Mir · M. Bharadwaj · C. S. Riar · S. Singh
Department of Food Engineering and Technology, SLIET, Sangrur, Punjab, India
B. Yousuf
Department of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences,
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
K. Gul (*)
Department of Food Process Engineering, National Institute of Technology,
Rourkela, Odisha, India
Department of Food Science and Engineering, School of Agriculture and Biology,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China