Protein Thermal Denaturation of Beef Muscle: Neutron Imaging and spectroscopies

International audienceOpen Food System is an industrial innovation project having as goal the development of “smart” domestic appliances, which can pilot cooking process of meat and fish without any human intervention. My Ph.D research belongs to that huge project with the purpose to follow the evolution of cooking process at molecular scale, describing biochemical reactions occurring among muscle constituents and associating them to macroscopic characteristics (texture, colour, …). Thermal denaturation of muscle proteins was studied by spectroscopy technics, able to observe their conformational modifications due to the application of several temperature/time conditions. Spectroscopy signatures (infrared and fluorescence) of these conformational changes (molecular scale) were measured, according to the applied cooking degree (low, middle and high cooked). Statistical analysis of gathered data through spectroscopy analyses showed that low cooked samples were separated from ones cooked at medium and high temperatures. To provide more structural information at a different scale (macroscopic > 100 μm), we performed neutron-imaging experiements. We were able to follow the morphology evolution of samples due to myofibrils contraction and water migration inside the matrix after cooking. Key words: muscle, proteins, temperature, spectroscopies, neutron imaging Acknowledgements: Open Food System is a research project tagged by Vitagora, Cap Digital, Imaginove, Aquimer, Microtechniques and Agrimip, financed by the French state and by the Franche-Comté Council as part of Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir run by Bpifrance