Determination of Volatile Organic Selenium Compounds from the Maillard Reaction in a Selenomethionine−Glucose Model System

Abstract

In the past, biomedicine, toxicology, and other related disciplines have made some progress with regard to the detrimental and beneficial effects of selenium in biological systems. Therefore, it is of interest to determine the chemical structure and occurrence of organoselenium compounds generated in food systems via the Maillard reaction. The Maillard reaction involves the reaction of amino acids with reducing sugars and occurs in many food systems during processing under high-temperature conditions and is responsible for the generation of many volatiles. This research describes a model Maillard reaction system between the amino acid selenomethionine and a reducing sugar, glucose, to generate volatile organoselenium compounds. Using gas chromatography and gas chromatography−mass spectrometry, five selenium compounds were tentatively identified and semiquantitative values for concentration obtained. Keywords: Organoselenium; selenomethionine; Maillard reaction; gas chromatography (GC); gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS)