title: Quantification of ferritin from staple food crops.
abstract: 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 microg 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Lukac
authors.forename: Maneesha R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Aluru
authors.forename: Manju B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Reddy
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001947:Breeding; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000737:chemistry*; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / Q000379:methods; D005293:Ferritins / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D005504:Food Analysis; D015151:Immunoblotting; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012275:Oryza / Q000737:chemistry; D027805:Phaseolus / Q000737:chemistry; D012639:Seeds / Q000737:chemistry; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D014908:Triticum / Q000737:chemistry; D003313:Zea mays / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D005293:Ferritins