Food protein-derived bioactive peptides have been recognized as a promising candidate for the development of functional foods or nutraceuticals. Peptides exhibiting antioxidant, anti-proliferative and anti-hypertensive activities have been characterized from corn proteins while the knowledge on the presence of immunomodulatory peptides in corn proteins is limited. The objective of this study was to identify the immunomodulatory peptides from corn proteins using interleukin 6 (IL-6) in human macrophage-like U937 cells as the marker. Results indicated that zein protein hydrolysate digested by thermolysin showed a high yield of peptides with potent activity, which was then used for further fractionation by RP-HPLC. We identified five peptides using LC–MS/MS, among which, peptide FLPFNQL showed the highest activity reducing IL-6 production by 57.7% ± 6.1%.

中文翻译：

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玉米醇溶蛋白水解产物的免疫调节肽的鉴定

食品蛋白衍生的生物活性肽已被认为是功能食品或保健食品开发的有前途的候选者。已经从玉米蛋白中表征了表现出抗氧化剂，抗增殖和抗高血压活性的肽，而关于玉米蛋白中免疫调节肽的存在的知识是有限的。这项研究的目的是使用人巨噬细胞样U937细胞中的白介素6（IL-6）从玉米蛋白中鉴定免疫调节肽。结果表明，用嗜热菌蛋白酶消化的玉米醇溶蛋白水解产物显示出高产率的具有有效活性的肽，然后将其用于RP-HPLC进一步分离。我们使用LC-MS / MS鉴定了五种肽，其中FLPFNQL肽显示出最高的活性，使IL-6产生减少了57种。