Fermentation for Peptides

As a leading CDMO, BOC Sciences provides one-stop fermentation services to produce custom peptide for various industries such as pharmaceutical, food, nutraceutical and cosmetic. Our manufacturing systems comply with good manufacturing practice (GMP), which are well suited to meet the needs of our customers around the world.

Learn more about Fermentation Products.

Introduction

Peptides are compounds of α-amino acids linked together by peptide bonds which are intermediate products of protein hydrolysis. The application of peptides mainly focuses on peptide drugs, peptide drug carriers, tissue engineering materials and peptide nutrition food. The production methods of polypeptides mainly include combinatorial chemistry, enzymatic hydrolysis, genetic engineering and microbial fermentation. Fermentation is a method of extracting peptides from metabolites produced by cultured microorganisms. At present, microorganisms can independently synthesize poly amino-acids including E-polylysine (E-PL), C-polyglutamate (C-PGA) and poly (L-arginine-L-aspartic acid)(cyanobacterial peptide).

Fermentation Production of Peptides

In microbial fermentation method, the substrate protein is hydrolyzed by the protease produced during the growth of the bacterial strain. Then the fermentation product is separated and purified, and finally the bioactive peptide is obtained. The production process technology of microbial fermentation is mainly to convert biological macromolecule protein into small molecule peptide according to contemporary microbial fermentation technology. Peptides with different amino acid arrays and molecular weights can be produced according to the metabolic and alcoholization standards by manipulating microorganisms.

Advantages of Fermentation for Peptides

Fermentation is a one-step process to prepare polypeptides. The preparation of polypeptides by microbial fermentation has the advantages of low cost, high safety, stable quality and remarkable function. The peptides produced by microorganisms have been proved to have numerous beneficial health effects, especially in food industry.

Application of Fermentation for Peptides

In the whole process of alcoholization, the resulting dispersed amino acids are digested, absorbed and used by microorganisms again, which is not easy to cause feedback inhibition to the metabolism of microorganisms. According to microbial metabolism, amino acids and small peptides were grafted and rearranged, and some peptide functional groups were decorated and assets were reorganized. For example, soybean peptides produced by microbial fermentation with soya bean as raw materials changed the original amino acid sequence of soybean protein, decorated the hydrophobic amino acid tail end of the peptide, made the soybean peptides not bitter taste, higher activity, and granted some biological activities of soybean peptides.

In addition, antimicrobial peptides produced by fermentation have also made progress in recent years. Antimicrobial peptides are a class of peptides that resist the defense response of microorganisms. It has the characteristics of small molecular weight, good water solubility, strong heat resistance, no immunogenicity, and wide antibacterial spectrum. Antimicrobial peptides are peptides encoded by specific genes in animal and plant cells and induced by external conditions to kill microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and viruses. The antimicrobial peptides produced by microorganisms isolated from fermented foods are generally harmless to humans. Therefore, it is safer and more effective than many preservatives when added to medicine and food as additives. Moreover, because of its low dosage, it is not easy to make organisms develop resistance.

What Can We Do?

BOC Sciences has the ability to convert a variety of traditional strains into engineered strains and provide one-stop fermentation CDMO services from laboratory scale to industrial scale fermentation services. Our fermentation product list includes proteins, industrial enzymes, and other small molecule compounds, such as peptides.

References

Chai KF. et al. Bioactive peptides from food fermentation: A comprehensive review of their sources, bioactivities, applications, and future development. Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf. 2020, 1-61.
Lazzaro BP. et al. Antimicrobial peptides: Application informed by evolution. Science. 2020, 368(6490).