Peptidomic analysis of whey protein hydrolysates and prediction of their antioxidant peptides

Enzymatic hydrolysis of proteins is a breakdown process of peptide bond in proteins, releasing some peptides with potential biological functions. Previous studies on enzymatic hydrolysis of whey proteins have not identified the complete peptide profiles after hydrolysis. In this study, we reconstructed a profile of peptides from whey hydrolysates with two enzymes and different processing conditions. We also developed an ensemble machine learning predictor to classify peptides obtained from whey hydrolysis. A total of 2572 peptides were identified over three process conditions with two enzymes in duplicate. 499 peptides were classified and chosen as potential antioxidant peptides from whey proteins. The peptides classified as antioxidants in the hydrolysates had a proportion of 13.1%–24.5% regarding all peptides identified. These results facilitate the selection of promising peptides involved in the antioxidant properties during the enzymatic hydrolysis of whey proteins, aiding the discovery of novel antioxidant peptides