Peptides diversity and oxidative sensitivity: case of specific optimized inactivated yeasts

Abstract

Estimation of the resistance of a wine against oxidation is of great importance for the wine. To that purpose, most of the commonly used chemical assays that are dedicated to estimate the antioxidant (or antiradical) capacity of a wine consist in measuring the capacity of the wine to reduce an oxidative compound or a stable radical. In the must/wine matrix, polyphenols are major compounds likely to react with oxidant or radical, but such reaction generate quinones that then are involved in varietal aroma loss via nucleophilic addition reaction. It raises the paradox that a good antioxidant capacity does not imply a good protection of such sensitive compounds as aromatic compounds which are wine key quality markers.

The authors have developed a methodology focusing on the survival time of a sensitive compound to estimate the oxidative sensitivity of a solution. A labeled nucleophile is monitored by UHPLC-ESI-Q-ToF MS periodically for hours (from 0.5h to 72h) after a chemical initiation of oxidation in wine model solution containing 4-methylcatechol. 7 Cystein containing peptides (alone or in combination) are used to artificially increase the nucleophilic environment (and thus the competition for quinone nucleophilic addition) and estimate the half-life of the labeled nucleophile. In addition, soluble fraction released by different inactivated yeasts are also used as complex source of nucleophiles.

Half-life of the labeled compound is the final expression of several complex mechanisms such as nucleophilic competition, but also oxygen consumption, or catechol reduction.
Independently of the mechanisms, we can observe that increasing the nucleophilic environment improve the half life of the labeled nucleophile. It is notably visible for the specific optimized inactivated yeast which released many cysteine-containing peptides.
Finally, this method relies on the fate of one sensitive nucleophile to estimate the sensitiveness of the whole matrix to oxidation. It estimates the half-life of this compound which allows to compare oxidative sensitivity of different matrices under specific oxidation conditions.