Alkali deamidation

As mentioned earlier, deamidation by excessive protein hydrolysis is undesirable for food use because it could result in reduced protein functionality and the release of bitter-tasting peptides [19]. Alkali-catalyzed deamidation is also undesirable because, in addition to indiscriminate hydrolysis, alkali treatment results in products such as lysinoalanine that have been implicated in kidney damage in rats [20,21],... 

When chemical hydrolysis is used for the preparation of soluble proteins for cosmetics, acidic treatment is preferred to alkaline for two main reasons (1) the average isoelectric point of the peptides obtained is lower than after alkaline processing (36,37) (deamidation is favored in alkali), and (2) degradation of amino acids is easier to avoid. 

---