Natural Antifungal Peptides/Proteins as Model for Novel Food Preservatives

Abstract

A large range of ingredients for food and food products are subject to fungal contamination, which is a major cause of destruction of crops, exposure of animals and humans to invasive mycotoxins, and food spoilage. The resistance of fungal species to common preservation methods highlights the necessity of new ways to increase the shelf life of raw material for food and food products. Antimicrobial peptides and proteins (AMPs) are essential members of the immune system of most living organisms. Due to their broad range of activity and their stability to commonly used food processes, they represent promising alternatives to traditional preservatives. However, despite the growing number of reports of potential food applications of these AMPs, the number of approved peptides is low. Poor solubility, toxicity, and a time‐consuming extraction are hurdles that limit their application in food products. Thanks to a deep understanding of the key determinants of their activity, the development of optimized synthetic peptides has reduced these drawbacks. This review presents natural and synthetic antifungal peptides/proteins (AFPs), effective against food‐related fungi, with particular emphasis on AFPs from plant sources. The design of novel antifungal peptides via key elements of antifungal activity is also reviewed. The potential applications of natural and synthetic AFPs as novel antifungal food preservatives are finally discussed.

Deep learning enables the design of functionalde novoantimicrobial proteins

“…To date, numerous methods have been described for generating novel antifungal peptide designs. Directed and rational approaches have focused on comparing the sequences and structures of antifungal peptides to identify the key elements that impact antifungal potency, such as peptide cationicity and hydrophobicity, peptide tertiary structure and the distribution of the residues within that structure, and peptide length and amphipathicity 36,65,66 . On the other hand, machine learning methods have become an attractive alternative for predicting peptide sequences with antifungal activity; different publications have explored this approach by using and combining a variety of approaches like support vector machines 67 , hidden Markov models (HMM) 68,69 and character embedding 70 .…”

“…In this work, we use this alternative protein design model to generate new de novo antifungal peptides. Antifungal peptides are receiving increasing interest due to their potential applications in diverse industries such as food manufacturing, agriculture, cosmetics, and therapeutics 36,37,38,39 , where they offer an attractive and useful replacement to current chemical alternatives.…”

A Safe and Multitasking Antimicrobial Decapeptide: The Road from De Novo Design to Structural and Functional Characterization

“…The incidence of serious infections caused by pathogenic fungi that are resistant to the commonly used antifungal drugs is increasing dramatically, and the development of new antifungal agents is becoming an urgent need to avoid a global collapse in the ability to control this type of infections at different levels ranging from human health to food security [39,40].…”

“…and Candida spp. represent two of most relevant genera of mold and yeasts, which are responsible for the majority of fungal infections [40].…”

Cloning and characterization of Osmotin (OsmSt) alleles from potato cultivar ‘Kufri Chipsona 1’

“…Due to its anti-fungal properties and highly stable nature, osmotin is now considered as a natural food preservative (Thery et al 2019). Osmotin also shows structural and functional similarity to insulin-sensitizing hormone, adinopectin, which further highlights the importance of protein in therapeutics (Kumar et al 2015).…”