Peptidomics: new trends in food science

In recent years, peptidomics is gaining ever-growing relevance in food science. The emerging field of food peptidomics is defined as the whole pool of peptides existing in food products or generated during food processing, storage or digestion. The recent advancement in high-resolution mass spectrometry techniques provides a more detailed picture, although not yet exhaustive, of the peptides present or derived from food. Food peptidomics techniques have been successfully applied in understanding food protein digestion, in the study of the microbial contribution to food protein hydrolysis, in the identification of food-derived bioactive peptides and peptide biomarkers. Ad-hoc efforts are still needed to improve the identification of short peptides and the analysis of the large data set generated.