Use of urea-polyacrylamide electrophoresis for discrimination of A1 and A2 beta casein variants in raw cow’s milk

Beta-casein (BC) in cow’s milk occurs in several genetic variants, where BC A1 (BCA1) and BC A2 (BCA2) are the most frequent. This work deals with a method based on modified polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis using urea PAGE to discriminate BCA1 and BCA2 variants from Holstein Friesian (HF) and genetically selected Jersey A2/A2 (JA2) cow’s milk. Two well defined bands were obtained from BC fraction of HF milk, while that of JA2 showed a single band. Proteins from these bands were sequenced by HPLC-quadrupole linear ion trap/mass spectrometry, resulting in BCA1 and BCA2 separation from the BC fraction of HF milk, whereas BCA2 was the only constituent of JA2 fraction. This method represents a feasible and useful tool to on site phenotyping of BC fraction of cow’s milk for pharmaceutical and food industries applications.