Media Updates, page-5264

Thanks Blackforest for this very interesting link. I admit that my knowledge of biology and the workings of the chemical analysis of bovine milk is very limited however I do understand the research process and summarize what I understand the study’s findings to be.

1. The research was funded by a “Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest”. Who provided those funds would be interesting to see but I believe if it was the A2MC, they would have stated so up front.

2. “Milk metabolites were separated and analyzedusing nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy- and liquid-chromatography massspectrometry-based metabolomics techniques.” It was mentioned that the results were highly reproduceable which means they verified their measurement methods to determine the amount of variation it introduced into the study.

3. Multivariate statistical analysis was used to analyze the results. Multivariate analysis is appropriate when you are studying more than one variable to see its relationship to other variables in a complex environment. In this case several β-casein variant milk components were studied as the graph that you posted above.

4. Conclusions: “Several metabolites such as methionine,proline, and α-lactose were found to be more abundant in β-casein variant A2milk, whereas choline, glycine, citric acid, and cAMP were more abundant invariant A1 milk. These findings provide novel insights into the differences inmilk components among β-casein variants at the metabolite level. Moreover,these data offer useful resource for further research on the physiologicalimplications of β-casein variants.”

BottomLine: This is a verystrong study that continues to outline the roadmap for future scientificstudies. It highlights potential areas of investigation. We may not know what the specific relationship is or what the mechanisms are that produce a difference between A1 and A2 β-caseinbut this study puts some statistically strong markers in place to point the wayfor future research.