Food-Derived Bioactive Peptides, Efficacy, Metabolic Fate, and Mechanisms of Action

Dear Colleagues,

Bioactive peptides are defined as short amino acid sequences with potential specific physiological functions. It has been demonstrated via animal experiments and human clinical trials that the ingestion of peptides in food protein hydrolysates and fermented foods exerts a wide spectrum of biological functions, including the suppression of metabolic risk factors (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity and peroxidation) and improvement of skin, gut, oral, bone, immune and neurological functions. Some peptides in food have recently been used for therapeutic purposes, while they are classified as food. Such peptides are referred to as food-derived bioactive peptides.

These facts have encouraged researchers to identify active peptides in foods. The activity-guided fractionation based on the high throughput assays is normally used to identify active peptides. Recently, molecular docking analysis and the rapid peptide sequence technique based on liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry were utilized for the identification of bioactive peptides in foods. However, there is a deep gap between the concentration of bioactive peptides in foods and the target organ upon ingestion of foods containing peptides, which hinders understanding the mechanisms of action underlying food-derived bioactive peptides. Recent studies have indicated that majority of peptides in foods are further cleaved into smaller peptides and amino acids by peptidases within the gastrointestinal tract, blood and tissues, while few peptides in foods are directly absorbed into the body and reach the target organ. Thus, active peptides in foods may lose potential activity via digestion. On the other hand, inactive peptides in foods may change to bioactive peptides during gastrointestinal digestion. Therefore, understanding the metabolic fate of peptides in foods is crucial for identifying bioactive peptides in the body and understanding their mechanisms of action.

Thus, in this Special Issue, we aim to collect articles and review papers that provide evidence of not only the beneficial nutritional effects of bioactive peptides for human health and disease, but also the mechanisms of action based on the contents in target organs upon ingestion.

Dr. Kenji Sato
Dr. Shigemura Yasutaka
Guest Editors

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• bioactive peptides
• peptide absorption
• oral bioavailability
• functional foods
• human health