Advances in Structural Characterization and Functional Properties of Animal-Plant Mixed Proteins

In recent years, mixed protein systems composed of animal and plant proteins have gradually attracted the attention of researchers. Numerous studies have shown that mixing animal and plant proteins can improve the processing functional properties of proteins under specific conditions, such as gelling, emulsifying, foaming and film-forming properties. In terms of nutritional functional properties, mixing animal and plant proteins can also achieve better performance on digestion, absorption and amino acid scoring patterns for the nutritional quality assessment compared with single proteins, of which whey-soy ‘dual-protein’, discovered by studying the dose-effect and mechanisms of synergism and interactions of different animal-plant mixed proteins, have been demonstrated significant nutrition quality improvement on hematopoietic reconstruction, immune function, muscle level, lipid metabolism and osteoporosis. The paper reviews the interaction, structural characterization, processing and nutritional properties of animal-plant mixed proteins, and provides an outlook on the future research trend of animal-plant mixed proteins in the food processing field.