Complex enzymolysis-derived peanut peptides: in silico selection of antioxidant peptides, emulsion-microcapsule encapsulation, and in vitro digestive performance evaluation.

Authors

Chengli Jia, Yansheng Wang, Tiantian Ran, Zhiqing Gong, Wenjia Cui, Shasha Song, Jian Zhang, Furong Hou, Junyan Shi, Fengjuan Jia, Wenliang Wang

Published in

Food research international (Ottawa, Ont.). Volume 242. Issue Pt 4. Pages 120139. Oct 31, 2026. Epub Jul 23, 2026.

Abstract

Peanut peptides (PP) are promising plant-derived functional ingredients, but bitterness and gastrointestinal instability limit oral applications. This study integrated complex enzymolysis, LC-MS/MS-assisted in silico screening, molecular dynamics (MD), and W₁/O/W₂ double-emulsion microencapsulation to establish a laboratory-scale discovery-to-delivery workflow for antioxidant PP. Under optimized alkaline protease/flavor protease hydrolysis (5:5, w/w; 10% enzyme; 59 °C; 9 h), LC-MS/MS identified 763 peanut-derived peptides. Stepwise screening using PeptideRanker (>0.5), ToxinPred3.0 (<0.5), and AlgPred2.0 (<0.5) yielded 157 candidates. CDOCKER docking identified P152 (FEELNADLFR) and P142 (YFPTQALNFAFK) as the top docking-ranked Keap1-Kelch and MPO candidates, respectively, with CDOCKER energies of -163.791 and - 158.855 kcal/mol; P34 (SPNVDPPKTP) and P135 (IPVPFPDPDGDYT) showed the lowest calculated binding energies with ABTS⁺ and DPPH, respectively. MD/MM-PBSA further supported dynamic stability and favorable binding tendencies of P152-Keap1-Kelch and P142-MPO complexes. The optimized PP-loaded double-emulsion microcapsule (PP-M) showed high apparent encapsulation efficiency (89.43%, nitrogen-balance estimate). Human sensory evaluation and electronic-tongue analysis demonstrated that PP-M significantly reduced perceived bitterness and instrumental bitterness response compared with free PP hydrolysate at matched peptide-equivalent concentration. Static INFOGEST digestion indicated gastric structural retention followed by intestinal disintegration, accompanied by increased peptide-equivalent content and enhanced radical-scavenging activity in the digesta. Overall, PP-M improved the in vitro sensory acceptability and bioaccessibility of PP, supporting formulation-level bitterness alleviation rather than complete bitterness elimination. Targeted bitter-peptide identification, marker-peptide release profiling, epithelial transport, and in vivo validation remain necessary.

PMID:
42637466
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 25 Aug 2026.

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