EVOLUTION: Of Mice . . .

Cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are the biggest causes of death globally. Therefore, prevention of these diseases is a focus of pharmaceuticals and functional food manufacturers. This review summarizes recent research trends and scientific knowledge in seaweed protein-derived peptides with particular emphasis on production, isolation and potential health impacts in prevention of hypertension, diabetes and oxidative stress. The current status and future prospects of bioactive peptides are also discussed. Bioactive peptides have strong potential for use in therapeutic drug and functional food formulation in health management strategy, especially cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Seaweeds can be used as sustainable protein sources in the production of these peptide-based drugs and functional foods for preventing such diseases. Many studies have reported that peptides showing angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition, antihypertensive, antioxidative and antidiabetics activities, have been successfully isolated from seaweed. However, further research is needed in large-scale production of these peptides, efficient isolation methods, interactions with functional foods and other pharmaceuticals, and their ease to digestion in in vivo studies and safety to validate the health benefits of these peptides.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1750-3841.14011

Bioactive Peptides Derived from Seaweed Protein and Their Health Benefits: Antihypertensive, Antioxidant, and Antidiabetic Properties

Interest in research into bioactive peptides (BPs) is growing because of their health-promoting ability. Several bioactivities have been ascribed to peptides, including antioxidant, antihypertensive and antimicrobial properties. As they can be produced from precursor proteins, the investigation of BPs in foods is becoming increasingly popular. For the same reason, production of BPs from by-products has also emerged as a possible means of reducing waste and recovering value-added compounds suitable for functional food production and supplements. Milk, meat and fish are the most investigated sources of BPs, but vegetable-derived peptides are also of interest. Vegetables are commonly consumed, and agro-industrial wastes constitute a cheap, large and lower environmental impact source of proteins. The use of advanced analytical techniques for separation and identification of peptides would greatly benefit the discovery of new BPs. In this context, this review provides an overview of the most recent applications in BP investigations for vegetable food and by-products. The most important issues regarding peptide isolation and separation, by single or multiple chromatographic techniques, are discussed. Additionally, problems connected with peptide identification in plants and non-model plants are discussed regarding the particular case of BP identification. Finally, the issue of peptide validation to confirm sequence and bioactivity is presented. Graphical representation of the analytical workflow needed for investigation of bioactive peptides and applied to vegetables and vegetable wastes Graphical Abstract.

Recent trends and analytical challenges in plant bioactive peptide separation, identification and validation

Every line of application glue code there is exists for one reason—to make omnivorous ingestion possible.

You Are What You Eat

Strategic enhancement of genetic gain for nutraceutical development in buckwheat: A genomics-driven perspective.

Buckwheat is a kind cereal mainly grown in cold plateau and mountainous districts. The seeds and food production made from buckwheat demonstrated great nutritional value and protective effects towards various kinds of disease. In this review, the antibacterial, trypsin inhibiting, antitumor, hypocholesterol, hypotensive and antidiabetic effects of buckwheat proteins and their enzyme hydrolysates were summarized and discussed. Many naturally occurring peptides isolated from buckwheat seeds are certified to be multiple functional compounds, such as buckwheat antimicrobial peptides, trypsin inhibitors, antitumor proteins, hypotensive peptides and antioxidant peptides. Besides its trypsin inhibiting activity upon proteases, buckwheat trypsin inhibitors also revealed antimicrobial activity towards fungi, Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and antitumor activity against various kinds of cancer cells. The antitumor effects and the trypsin inhibiting activity are related with the special active site of the peptide molecules, while the hypolipidemic property and the hypotensive activity are most probably associating with the unique amino acids composition of buckwheat proteins, for the reason that the hydrolyzed small peptides still possess the relevant activity. Buckwheat peptides show prospective application in function food area and traditional medicine research. And structure–activity relationship of peptides attracts much more interests in recent years.

Advance on the benefits of bioactive peptides from buckwheat

The current knowledge about early-life nutrition and environmental factors that affect the interaction between the symbiotic microbiota and the host immune system has demonstrated novel regulatory target for treating allergic diseases, autoimmune disorders and metabolic syndrome. Various kinds of food nutrients (such as dietary fiber, starch, polyphenols and proteins) can provide energy resources for both intestinal microbiota and the host. The indigestible food components are fermented by the indigenous gut microbiota to produce diverse metabolites, including short-chain fatty acids, bile acids and trimethylamine-N-oxide, which can regulate the host metabolized physiology, immunity homeostasis and health state. Therefore it is commonly believed early-life perturbation of the microbial community structure and the dietary nutrition interference on the child mucosal immunity contribute to the whole life susceptibility to chronic diseases. In all, the combined interrelationship between food ingredients nutrition, intestinal microbiota configurations and host system immunity provides new therapeutic targets to treat various kinds of pathogenic inflammations and chronic diseases.

Early-life food nutrition, microbiota maturation and immune development shape life-long health.

Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum (L.) Gaertn) is rich in functional compounds such as rutin, quercetin, d-chiro-inositol, dietary fiber, and essential amino acids. Electric field (EF) treatment before sprout germination results in physiological and chemical changes, and some alterations might lead to positive applications in plant seeds. MTT assay showed that the effect of total flavonoids on human gastric cancer cell line MGC80-3 was significantly changed after EF treatment for different germination days (3–7 days). Among them, the total flavonoids of tartary buckwheat (BWTF) on the third day had the most obvious inhibitory effect on MGC80-3 (p < 0.01). In addition, flow cytometry evidenced that different ratios of quercetin and rutin had effects on the proliferation of MGC80-3. The same content of quercetin and rutin had the best effect, reaching 6.18 ± 0.82%. The anti-cancer mechanism was mainly promoted by promoting the expression of apoptotic proteins. The expression of Bax/Bcl-2 and caspase-8 in MGC80-3 cells was mediated by BWTFs. This study has good research value for improving the biological and economic value of tartary buckwheat.

https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/24/17/3092/pdf

The Effect of Tartary Buckwheat Flavonoids in Inhibiting the Proliferation of MGC80-3 Cells during Seed Germination

Common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) and tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum L. Gaertn) were used as materials to study plant self-defensive strategies against oxidative stress and pathogen infection during seed germination. Sprout development induced hull structure split, membrane degradation and tissue injury, accompanied with production of a large amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide (O2-), hydroxyl radical (·OH), alkoxyl radical (R·) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Therefore, buckwheat sprouts had to face both oxidative stress and environment pathogen aggression during the course of malting. To analyze the antioxidant capacity of ROS by buckwheat seeds, the activity of four kinds of antioxidant enzyme was studied, including superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase and ascorbate peroxidase. Scavenging effects of 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl free radicals were also investigated. Both gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) and gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium and Bacillus subtilis) were applied to detect antibacterial activity of the germinated seeds against microorganism pathogen infection. Ethanolic extracts of flavonoids from germinated seeds revealed an obvious anti-tumor activity against human lung carcinoma cell line by MTT  assay. Our research in this paper indicated that through long term evolution, buckwheat had already developed advanced strategies to repair inner injury and to resist the outer environmental risks during seed germination. The enriched production of flavonoids in the germinating stage might quite possibly be applied in clinical field to deal with lung cancer.

	 

	Key words: Common buckwheat, tartary buckwheat, germinated sprout, antioxidant activity, antibacterial activity, antitumor activity, lung cancer.

/pdf/toward-a-novel-understanding-of-buckwheat-self-defensive-2111lm0zv8.pdf

Toward a novel understanding of buckwheat self-defensive strategies during seed germination and preliminary investigation on the potential pharmacological application of its malting products

Buckwheat seeds contain many kinds of functional compounds that are of benefit to patients with cardiovascular disease. In this research, a water-soluble buckwheat protein was isolated and purified through a DEAE-Sepharose anion exchange column and Sephadex G-75 gel chromatography. The isolated buckwheat protein fractions exhibited hypocho- lesterolemic activity in a HepG2 cell model and demonstrated prominent bile acid salt-binding activity in an in vitro assay. The antioxidative activity of protein fractions with hypolipidemic effects was detected in a free radical scavenging experi- ment. The buckwheat protein fraction with the most obvious hypolipidemic activity and free radical scavenging activity was named as WSBWP. Its molecular weight was estimated by SDS-PAGE electrophoresis to be 38 kDa. It could become a potential candidate in the treatment of atherosclerosis.

/pdf/a-novel-buckwheat-protein-with-a-beneficial-effect-in-652uqbzg1d.pdf

Yiming Zhou

Papers

Advance on the benefits of bioactive peptides from buckwheat

Early-life food nutrition, microbiota maturation and immune development shape life-long health.

The Effect of Tartary Buckwheat Flavonoids in Inhibiting the Proliferation of MGC80-3 Cells during Seed Germination

Toward a novel understanding of buckwheat self-defensive strategies during seed germination and preliminary investigation on the potential pharmacological application of its malting products

A novel buckwheat protein with a beneficial effect in atherosclerosis was purified from fagopyrum tataricum (l.) gaertn.