Recent advance in the investigation of aquatic “blue foods” at a molecular level: A proteomics strategy

Fish and other aquatic foods (“blue foods”), possessing advantages of large resources, species diversity, and high nutritional values, are becoming very important food sources. However, due to the species diversity, perishability, and allergenicity of blue foods, the consumption of blue foods is faced with challenges such as commercial fraud, mislabeling, and food safety issues. Proteomics strategies enable the qualitative and quantitative analysis of proteins in biological samples with fast speed, high throughput, and high accuracy, offering an effective and promising strategy for complementing the currently used detection and control methods. This review discusses latest developments of critical steps affecting proteomics technologies to solve problems in blue foods, introduces successful applications of solving critical issues such as traceability, quality, safety, and nutrition evaluation of blue foods at a molecular level by selecting appropriate proteomics strategies, and moreover, underlines the challenges and future development trends for the application of proteomics technologies in addressing the critical issues in blue foods. Proteomics techniques could provide an effective strategy for the authentication and traceability, and quality and safety control of blue foods. Protein molecules are closely related to the texture and allergenicity properties of blue foods, and protein molecular composition is affected by the species, place of production, processing and storage procedures. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of special protein biomarkers contributed to quality control and nutrition evaluation of blue foods. However, the extraction and enrichment step of low-abundance proteins prior to mass analysis should be further improved.