ABSTRACT
Breast milk is the primary food source for newborn mammals, and the World Health Organization recommends that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. Human milk composition varies with gestational age, lactation stage, within feeds, diurnally, and among mothers. This chapter aims to investigate the potentiality of linear matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) as a tool to assess the diversity and oddness of different artificial and mammalian kinds of milk compared to the reference human milk. An analysis of the peptides and low-molecular-weight proteins present in skimmed raw milk was performed using a benchtop linear MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. A hierarchical cluster analysis of the mass spectra was used to group milk samples according to the similarity of their spectral profiles. A MALDI-TOF mass spectral database compilation can assist nonspecialized mass spectrometric laboratories in the rapid screening and characterization of milk samples.
