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Aggregation of heat unstable wine proteins is responsible for the economically and technologically detrimental problem called wine protein haze. This is caused by the aggregation of thermally unfolded proteins that can precipitate in bottled wine. To study the influence of SO 2 in this phenomenon, wine proteins were isolated and thaumatins were identified has the most prone to aggregate in the presence of this compound. Isolated wine thaumatins aggregation was followed by dynamic light scattering (DLS), circular dichroism (CD), fluorescence spectroscopy and size exclusion chromatography (SEC). Our experimental results demonstrate that protein thermal unfolding after exposure of the protein to 70 °C does not present differences whether SO 2 is present or not. Conversely, when the protein solution is cooled to 15 °C (after heat stress) significant analytical changes can be observed between samples with and without SO 2 . A remarkable change of circular dichroism spectra in the region 220–230 nm is observed (which can be related to S-S torsion angles), as well as an increase in tryptophan fluorescence intensity (absence of fluorescence quenching by S-S bonds). Formation of covalently-linked dimeric and tetrameric protein species were also detected by SEC. The ability to dissolve the aggregates with 8 M urea seems to indicate that hydrophobic interactions are prevalent in the formed aggregates. Also, the reduction of these aggregates with tris (2-carboxyethyl) phosphine (TCEP) to only monomeric species reveals the presence of intermolecular S-S bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research performed during the last decades, the multifactorial mechanism responsible for white wine protein haze formation is not fully characterized. A model is proposed, which is essentially based on two postulates: the experimental identification of sulfur dioxide as the non-proteinaceous factor, and the inference from reliable data available in the literature of the dynamic chemistry played by wine protein sulfhydryl groups. Unlike other reducing agents, addition of SO 2 to must/wine upon heating cleaves intraprotein disulfide bonds, hinders thiol-disulfide exchange during protein interactions, and leads to formation of novel interprotein disulfide bonds. These bonds are ultimately responsible for wine protein aggregation following a nucleation-growth kinetic model, as shown by Dynamic Light Scattering experiments. The model was tested in wine model solution (using total and fractionated wine proteins) and validated under real wine conditions. The results achieved may open the way to develop techniques that will find wide application in the wine industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]