Pepsin: An Excellent Proteolytic Enzyme for the Production of Bioactive Peptides

ABSTRACTThe production of bioactive peptides (BPs) usually involves the enzymatic hydrolysis stage during which one or more proteases are used to break down the parental protein into shorter fragments. In this review, efforts were made to focus on using pepsin as a unique protease capable of generating BPs. We started with the description of BPs and proteases prior to the unraveling of pepsin's properties and immobilization for the production of BPs. The peptic hydrolysis of food-derived proteins to generate BPs with biological functions, e.g. antioxidative, ACE-inhibitory, metal-binding, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial activities from vegetable, fish, seafood, whey, casein, blood plasma, and egg proteins, among other unconventional protein sources were discussed. The review concluded with BPs used in developing food products for their techno-functional properties such as emulsifying, water, and fat-holding capacities.KEYWORDS: Proteasepepsinbioactive peptidesbioactivitytechno-functional propertiesnutrition AcknowledgmentsThe first author expresses special thanks to Duy Tan University, and the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) of Vietnam for supporting this research. The last author acknowledges the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology "the Belt and Road" Innovative Talent Exchange Foreign Expert Project (Grant Number DL2021003001 and DL2021014003L).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Author contributionsConceptualization: TJA. Writing: TJA, CCL, JOA, OT, and HP. Revision: TJA and SMJ. Final draft: SMJ.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China [DL2021003001 and DL2021014003L].