Nutritional improvement of soybean oil via lipase-catalyzed interesterification

In order to decrease the content of linoleoyl moiety in soybean oil, soybean oil that contains 22.8% oleoyl, 54.8% linoleoyl, and 7.1% α-linolenoyl moieties as molar acyl moiety composition was interesterified in hexane with oleic acid or α-linolenic acid, using an immobilized sn-l,3-specific lipase (Lipozyme® IM) fromMucor miehei. The reactions were carried out in a batch reactor at 37°C in the following system: molar ratio of fatty acid to soybean oil = 1.0 ～ 6.0, 5.0 mL of hexane/500 μmol soybean oil, and 10.0 or 15.0 batch interesterification units of enzyme/500 μmol soybean oil. Under these reaction conditions, the rates of interesterification of acyl moieties in soybean oil were of the order: stearoyl > palmitoyl > linoleoyl > oleoyl > α-linolenoyl, and the reaction with oleic acid occurred without a significant loss of α-linolenoyl moiety. At the molar ratio of 3.0 and the reaction time of 6 h, triacylglycerols (TGs), which contain 50.8% oleoyl, 38.8% linoleoyl, and 5.4% α-linolenoyl moieties, were produced in the reaction with oleic acid; TGs that contain 13.5% oleoyl, 40.8% linoleoyl, and 40.4% α-linolenoyl moieties were obtained with α-linolenic acid. Approximately 86-88% of the interesterification of linoleoyl moiety, which occurred in 10 h, took place within 1 h.