Study on ionic liquids based novel method for separation and purification of silkworm pupa protein

Silkworm pupa protein (SPP) that obtained by traditional method usually had a high fat content, which would impose restrictions on the further use of SPP. Herein, various functionalized ionic liquids (ILs) were used to extract SPP from silkworm pupae, the structure-performance relationship of ILs with their SPP separation performance were explored at the same time. The research showed that the maxi-mum extraction yield of SPP was up to 62.6% with less than 0.5% low fat content by using 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([Emim]Cl), when the dissolution experiment was conducted at 90 ? for 24 h with ethanol bath as the regeneration solvent. Comparing with the structure of raw material, the regenerated SPP maintained the native protein backbone. Meanwhile, all regenerated SPP showed a de-creased crystallinity, which also exhibited decreased fraction of the alpha-helix comparing to that beta-sheet united with coil random structures. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences