Quantification of Ferritin from Staple Food Crops

• Published in: Journal of agricultural and food chemistry Vol. 57; no. 6; pp. 2155 - 2161
• Main Authors: Lukac, Rebecca J, Aluru, Maneesha R, Reddy, Manju B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Chemical Society 25.03.2009
• Subjects: Amino Acid Sequence; Analytical Methods; beans; Biological and medical sciences; Breeding; brown rice; corn; Crops, Agricultural - chemistry; enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay - methods; Feeding. Feeding behavior; ferritin; Ferritins - analysis; Ferritins - chemistry; Food Analysis; Food industries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Immunoblotting; Molecular Sequence Data; Oryza - chemistry; Phaseolus - chemistry; polyclonal antibodies; protein composition; red beans; Seeds - chemistry; Sequence Alignment; Triticum - chemistry; Vertebrates: anatomy and physiology, studies on body, several organs or systems; wheat; white beans; Zea mays - chemistry; iron bioavailability; staple crops; Ferritin; ELISA; Iron; Bioavailability; Enzyme immunoassay; Detection; ELISA assay; Food; Quantitative analysis
• ISSN: 0021-8561; 1520-5118
• DOI: 10.1021/jf803381d

Ferritin−iron has been shown to be as bioavailable as ferrous sulfate in humans. Thus, biofortification to breed crops with high ferritin content is a promising strategy to alleviate the global iron deficiency problem. Although ferritin is present in all food crops, its concentration varies between species and varieties. Therefore, a successful ferritin biofortification strategy requires a method to rapidly measure ferritin concentrations in food crops. The objective of this study was to develop a simple and reliable ELISA using an anti-ferritin polyclonal antibody to detect ferritin in various crops. Crude seed extracts were found to have 10.2 ± 1.0, 4.38 ± 0.9, 1.2 ± 0.3, 0.38 ± 0.1, and 0.04 ± 0.01 μg of ferritin/g of dry seed in red beans, white beans, wheat, maize, and brown rice, respectively. Although the measured absolute concentrations of ferritin values were low, the presented method is applicable for rapid screening for the relative ferritin concentrations of large numbers of seeds to identify and breed ferritin-rich crops.