Identifying critical parameters for extraction of carnosine and anserine from chicken meat with high voltage pulsed electric fields and water

Carnosine (β-alanyl-L-histidine) and its methylated counterpart anserine (β-alanyl-1-methylhistidine) are important functional dipeptides found in various vertebrates' tissues. In this study, we identified the critical parameters of pulsed electric fields (PEF), coupled to mechanical pressing, followed by incubation in water up to 240 min for the extraction of these bioactive dipeptides from chicken meat. We show that PEF improves the kinetics of anserine and carnosine release to water by 7 to 53%, compared to the same water extraction process without PEF when the incubation time is below 120 min. A fractional factorial design showed that the incubation time in the water, after PEF pretreatment, had the most significant effect on dipeptides extraction. The maximum achieved total protein yield was 15.5 mg g_{fresh weight(FW)} ^-1 after 120 min incubation in water. The maximum carnosine extraction yield was 7.48 mg g_FW⁻¹ with a maximum anserine extraction yield of 3.05 mg g_FW⁻¹. The specific energy yield of extraction of protein, carnosine, and anserine was 488.16 mg J⁻¹, 39.43 mg J⁻¹, and 131.63 mg J⁻¹ respectively. The developed method is scalable and could be further explored to extract bioactive compounds from animal tissues.