Marine Bioactive Peptides—An Overview of Generation, Structure and Application with a Focus on Food Sources

Abstract

The biggest obstacles in the application of marine peptides are two-fold, as in the case of non-marine plant and animal-derived bioactive peptides: elucidating correlation between the peptide structure and its effect and demonstrating its stability in vivo. The structures of marine bioactive peptides are highly variable and complex and dependent on the sources from which they are isolated. They can be cyclical, in the form of depsipeptides, and often contain secondary structures. Because of steric factors, marine-derived peptides can be resistant to proteolysis by gastrointestinal proteases, which presents an advantage over other peptide sources. Because of heterogeneity, amino acid sequences as well as preferred mechanisms of peptides showing specific bioactivities differ compared to their animal-derived counterparts. This review offers insights on the extreme diversity of bioactivities, effects, and structural features, analyzing 253 peptides, mainly from marine food sources. Similar to peptides in food of non-marine animal origin, a significant percentage (52.7%) of the examined sequences contain one or more proline residues, implying that proline might play a significant role in the stability of bioactive peptides. Additional problems with analyzing marine-derived bioactive peptides include their accessibility, extraction, and purification; this review considers the challenges and proposes possible solutions.

Marine Organisms as a Rich Source of Biologically Active Peptides

“…The limited number of specimens that can be collected associated with a low concentration of active compounds in tissues makes this task a challenge. Another option is the use of commercial marine organisms for prospecting (Sharma et al, 2009;Zhong et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014Zhang et al, , 2015Pavlicevic et al, 2020).…”

“…That requires adequate amounts of the pure peptide. Due to the high diversity of marine organism sources and marine peptides, there is no standardized extraction protocol, directly depending on the source (Sperstad et al, 2011;Pavlicevic et al, 2020).…”

Enzyme-Assisted Release of Antioxidant Peptides from Porphyra dioica Conchocelis

“…Furthermore, the degradation of these proteins into peptides has demonstrated an increase in their antioxidant capacity due to their specific characteristics, e.g., amino acid sequence, hydrophobicity and molecular mass [3]. Antioxidant peptides can be generated from the original protein by controlled enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation or released during digestion [9]. Enzymatic hydrolysis is the primary method of release of these molecules since it is considered a sustainable and rapid technique that can target specific amino acidic sequences.…”

Amino Acid Profiling with Chemometric Analysis as a Feasible Tool for the Discrimination of Marine-Derived Peptide Powders

“…Moreover, marine-derived peptides have demonstrated various biological activities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fatigue, anti-hypertensive, and anti-obesity activities [4][5][6]. Consequently, marine-derived peptides are attracting more and more attention and have been widely applied in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries [1,7].…”

“…Moreover, proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic approaches have recently been examined as potential methods to detect the adulteration of different fish species and other aquatic products [12]. Current research of marine-derived protein hydrolysates has mainly been focused on functional properties, preparation processes, applications, and storage technologies [1,7,[13][14][15]; however, there have been few published studies regarding the adulteration detection of marine-derived peptide powders with the substitution of similar peptides from other materials.…”