Transcobalamin derived from bovine milk stimulates apical uptake of vitamin B12 into human intestinal epithelial cells.

Intestinal uptake of vitamin B12 (hereafter B12) is impaired in a significant proportion of the human population. This impairment is due to inherited or acquired defects in the expression or function of proteins involved in the binding of diet-derived B12 and its uptake into intestinal cells. Bovine milk is an abundant source of bioavailable B12 wherein it is complexed with transcobalamin. In humans, transcobalamin functions primarily as a circulatory protein, which binds B12 following its absorption and delivers it to peripheral tissues via its cognate receptor, CD320. In the current study, the transcobalamin-B12 complex was purified from cows' milk and its ability to stimulate uptake of B12 into cultured bovine, mouse and human cell lines was assessed. Bovine milk-derived transcobalamin-B12 complex was absorbed by all cell types tested, suggesting that the uptake mechanism is conserved across species. Furthermore, the complex stimulated the uptake of B12 via the apical surface of differentiated Caco-2 human intestinal epithelial cells. These findings suggest the presence of an alternative transcobalamin-mediated uptake pathway for B12 in the human intestine other than that mediated by the gastric glycoprotein, intrinsic factor. Our findings highlight the potential for transcobalamin-B12 complex derived from bovine milk to be used as a natural bioavailable alternative to orally administered free B12 to overcome B12 malabsorption.

Gastric digestion of cow and goat milk: Impact of infant and young child in vitro digestion conditions.

Many infants and young children are fed nutritional milk formulas. Although products are commonly based on cow milk, goat milk provides an alternative. We directly compared digestion of cow and goat milk proteins, varying pH, enzyme concentrations and incubation times to simulate infant and young child gastric conditions. Protein digestion and peptide formation were evaluated using electrophoresis and chromatography. Digestion of higher molecular weight whey proteins increased with decreased pH and higher enzyme concentrations of young child gastric digestion conditions compared to infant conditions. ß-lactoglobulin was poorly digested under all gastric digestion conditions. Caseins reacted to pH changes differently compared to whey proteins, with less digestion of casein at pH 3.0 than at pH 5.0. Caseins from goat milk tended to be more efficiently digested compared to caseins from cow milk and peptide profiles from goat milk were distinct from cow milk.

Proteomics data in support of the quantification of the changes of bovine milk proteins during mammary gland involution.

Here we provide data from three proteomics techniques; two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) followed by identification of selected spots using PSD MALDI-TOF MS/MS, one-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by LC-MS/MS analysis of gel slices (GeLC) and dimethyl isotopic labelling of tryptic peptides followed by Orbitrap MS/MS (DML), to quantify the changes in the repertoire of bovine milk proteins that occurs after drying off. We analysed skim milk and whey sampled at day 0 and either day 3 or day 8 after drying off. These analyses identified 45 spots by MALDI-TOF, 51 proteins by GeLC and 161 proteins by DML, for which the detailed data work-up is presented as three Excel files. The data supplied in this article supports the accompanying publication "Changes in the repertoire of bovine milk proteins during mammary involution" (Boggs et al., 2015) [1]. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifiers ProteomeXchange: PXD003110 and ProteomeXchange: PXD003011.