Food Proteins and Bioactive Peptides: New and Novel Sources, Characterisation Strategies and Applications

Abstract

By 2050, the world population is estimated to reach 9.6 billion, and this growth continues to require more food, particularly proteins. Moreover, the Westernisation of society has led to consumer demand for protein products that taste good and are convenient to consume, but additionally have nutritional and health maintenance and well-being benefits. Proteins provide energy, but additionally have a wide range of functions from enzymatic activities in the body to bioactivities including those associated with heart health, diabetes-type 2-prevention and mental health maintenance; stress relief as well as a plethora of other health beneficial attributes. Furthermore, proteins play an important role in food manufacture and often provide the binding, water- or oil-holding, emulsifying, foaming or other functional attributes required to ensure optimum sensory and taste benefits for the consumer. The purpose of this issue is to highlight current and new protein sources and their associated functional, nutritional and health benefits as well as best practices for quantifying proteins and bioactive peptides in both a laboratory and industry setting. The bioaccessibility, bioavailability and bioactivities of proteins from dairy, cereal and novel sources including seaweeds and insect protein and how they are measured and the relevance of protein quality measurement methods including the Protein Digestibility Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) and Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) are highlighted. In addition, predicted future protein consumption trends and new markets for protein and peptide products are discussed.

The potential application of the protein hydrolysates of three medicinal plants: cytotoxicity and functional properties

“…On the other hand, protein hydrolysis is used today in the industry as an advantage to improve protein solubility. Besides, hydrolysis is a strategy in which bioactive peptides may be produced that often have beneficial health effects for the consumers (Hayes, 2018). For this purpose, physicochemical and sensory properties of bioactive peptides derived from the plant protein hydrolysates were investigated.…”

Role of Milk-Derived Antibacterial Peptides in Modern Food Biotechnology: Their Synthesis, Applications and Future Perspectives

“…In particular, positively charged amino acids are extremely active against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria [30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40]. In comparison to conventional antibiotics, ABPs have considered interacting with bacterial DNA and RNA [32,41], forming a hydrogen bond with substances such as 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine [33,42] or sodium chloride [30,39]. This ABPs antibacterial action would lead to the membrane dissolution or a specific binding to nucleic acids [34,35,43,44].…”

“…A diversity of peptides comes from the different food protein sources (so-called functional food) with some specific properties such as antibacterial, anti-carcinogenic, hormone-tropic, immunomodulatory and antihypertensive effects [36,37,38,39]. The main source of bioactive peptides is dairy products, such as milk [40,41,42,43].…”

Current Trends of Bioactive Peptides—New Sources and Therapeutic Effect

“…Good sources of peptides are protein-rich food products of plant [ 18 ], animal [ 19 ], or alternative origin [ 20 , 21 ]. Recently, peptides were isolated and identified from products with low content of protein [ 22 ], new foods [ 23 ], residues from food production [ 24 ], or non-food products [ 25 ]. It seems crucial to find ways for making the best use of such sources of peptides, for example, by using efficient methods to obtain these compounds.…”