In silico Prospecting for Novel Bioactive Peptides from Bigeye Tuna Thunnus obesus
Main Article Content
Abstract
The bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus), a widely consumed pelagic fish with high nutritional and economic value, is recognized as a promising source of bioactive compounds. Despite several studies on its protein hydrolysates, the identification of specific bioactive peptides (BAPs) remains limited due to the laborious and expensive nature of conventional discovery workflows. To address this, an in silico prospecting approach was employed to accelerate BAP discovery. Major tuna muscle proteins were virtually digested under simulated gastrointestinal conditions to generate peptide fragments. These fragments were then screened against established databases for predicted bioactivities, toxicity, bitterness, intestinal and plasma stability, and novelty. After multi-step in silico screening using integrated bioinformatics tools and comparison with established peptide databases, 179 peptides (2-10 amino acids) were selected from a total of 1,311 peptides generated by simulated gastrointestinal digestion. These were further narrowed to 26 peptides with PeptideRanker scores > 0.5, of which 13 peptides candidates were identified as non-toxic, stable, water-soluble, and exhibiting high predicted bioactivity. Molecular docking analyses indicated favorable interactions with ACE and DPP-IV, with IRP showing the strongest predicted binding to ACE (p = 5.993 × 10⁻⁵) and GCHPK exhibiting the highest affinity toward DPP-IV (p = 9.811 × 10⁻⁴). This computational workflow enables faster and wider identification of tuna-derived BAPs and provides an efficient strategy for nutraceutical development and targeted functional food formulation based on marine protein resources.
Keywords
Thunnus obesus, in silico prospecting, bioactive peptides, seafood.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
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