Miraculin protein found in miracle fruit

Miraculin is a plant protein that has an unusual property of changing taste by switching sour into a sweet taste. Two histidine residues, located in exposed regions, are the main responsible of the properties of miraculin.

Miraculin is found in a berry called Synsepalum dulcificum.

Miraculin is a taste-modifying protein isolated from the red berries of Richadella dulcifica, a shrub native to West Africa. Miraculin by itself is not sweet, but it is able to turn a sour taste into a sweet taste.

Complete amino acid sequence and structure characterization of the taste-modifying protein, miraculin.
J Biol Chem. 1989 April. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Education, Yokohama National University, Japan.
The taste-modifying protein, miraculin, has the unusual property of modifying sour taste into sweet taste. The complete amino acid sequence of miraculin purified from miracle fruits by a newly developed method (Theerasilp, S., and Kurihara, Y. (1988) J. Biol. Chem. 263, 11536-11539) was determined by an automatic Edman degradation method. Miraculin was a single polypeptide with 191 amino acid residues. The calculated molecular weight based on the amino acid sequence and the carbohydrate content (13.9%) was 24,600. Asn-42 and Asn-186 were linked N-glycosidically to carbohydrate chains. High homology was found between the amino acid sequences of miraculin and soybean trypsin inhibitor.

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