Department of Coatings and Polymeric Materials, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota 58102-6050, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Feb 16;14(6):8384-8393. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c21650. Epub 2022 Feb 4.
Plant-based proteins are attractive components which may serve as sustainable alternatives to current petrochemical products. Both soy protein and major corn protein, zein, are of interest in food packaging applications due to their sustainability, biodegradation properties, and inherent physicochemical properties. This study discusses the development of bioplastic materials, where it explores the effects of combining zein, soy protein, and plasticizing latexes derived from plant oil-based monomers (POBMs) on properties of resulting bioplastic films. By looking for synergistic effects of soy protein's inherent film formation ability and zein's higher strength, we prepare strong yet flexible soy-zein films as materials, called proteoposites. Incorporation of natural additive POBM-latexes helps to plasticize and hydrophobize the bioplastic films and thus to improve mechanical and barrier properties. Variation of the POBM-latexes' particle size further aims to enhance the performance of resulting bioplastic films. As a result, modified soy-zein proteoposite films with improved moisture resistance, enhanced mechanical behavior, and greater barrier properties were developed. Machine learning-based computational models were utilized in order to find main structural factors affecting the bioplastic's properties and develop a quantitative structure-property relationship model between the physicochemical properties of the film components and the resulted bioplastics' properties and performance. The developed model effectively predicts experimental outcomes with >85% (: 0.85) accuracy. The newly synthesized proteoposites confirmed the machine learning model predictions. As a result, proteoposite films made of two plant proteins and modified with POBM-latexes can be considered as an attractive and viable replacement for petrochemical food packaging products.
植物蛋白是一种很有吸引力的成分，它可以作为当前石化产品的可持续替代品。由于其可持续性、可生物降解性和固有物理化学性质，大豆蛋白和主要的玉米蛋白玉米醇溶蛋白都在食品包装应用中受到关注。本研究讨论了生物塑料材料的开发，探索了将玉米醇溶蛋白、大豆蛋白和植物油基单体（POBM）衍生的增塑胶乳结合对生物塑料薄膜性能的影响。通过寻找大豆蛋白固有的成膜能力和玉米醇溶蛋白更高强度的协同效应，我们制备了强韧而柔韧的大豆-玉米醇溶蛋白薄膜作为材料，称为蛋白复合物。天然添加剂 POBM-胶乳的加入有助于增塑和疏水化生物塑料薄膜，从而提高机械性能和阻隔性能。POBM-胶乳粒径的变化进一步旨在提高生物塑料薄膜的性能。结果，开发出了具有改善的耐湿性、增强的机械性能和更好的阻隔性能的改性大豆-玉米醇溶蛋白蛋白复合物薄膜。利用基于机器学习的计算模型，寻找影响生物塑料性能的主要结构因素，并建立薄膜成分的物理化学性质与生物塑料性能和性能之间的定量结构-性能关系模型。所开发的模型可以有效地预测实验结果，准确率超过 85%（R2 = 0.85）。新合成的蛋白复合物证实了机器学习模型的预测。因此，用 POBM-胶乳改性的两种植物蛋白制成的蛋白复合物薄膜可以被认为是石化食品包装产品的一种有吸引力和可行的替代品。
