Fatigue, which was accompanied by a modern life style and high intensity exercise, has become a common human condition. Meanwhile, human health is closely related to the function of the immune system, and the impaired function of the immune system will also lead to fatigue. Consequently, it is urgent to find natural anti-fatigue and immune enhancing compounds without side-effects.
Recently, the research team led by Prof. LI Pengcheng from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) successfully obtained the special sequence of peptides from monkfish (Lophius litulon) protein, and proved that the monkfish peptides had the effect on anti-fatigue and enhancing immunity, furthermore, the team has also found the monkfish peptides could regulate the immune function by regulating receptors involved in inflammatory responses.
The study was published in Journal of Functional Foods on Apr. 28.
Researchers used a series of separation and purification techniques, including ultrafiltration, gel filtration chromatography and reverse high-performance liquid chromatography to obtain specific sequences of peptides, and found the peptides could significantly increase the antioxidant enzyme activities, hepatic glycogen and lactate dehydrogenase contents, and decrease the blood urea nitrogen and blood lactic acid contents in exercise-induced fatigue mice.
What's more, they found the monkfish peptides could enhance the spleen lymphocytes proliferation and natural killer cells activity in mice. Transcriptomics analysis showed that there were 205 genes up-regulated and 1040 genes down-regulated after the mice were fed with monkfish peptides, and the peptides could inhibit the inflammatory cytokines activation by down-regulating the chemokine and Nucleotide Oligomerization Domain (NOD)-like receptor signaling pathways, thereby modulating the mice immune response.
"The monkfish peptides could be applied in the healthcare products associated with anti-fatigue and enhancing immunity, which could improve the utilization rate of monkfish," said WANG Xueqin, first author of the study.
This study was supported by the Key Projects for Major Projects on the Transformation of Old and Novel Kinetic Energy of Shandong Province , STS Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Fig. 1 (a) Separation chromatogram for the monkfish peptides separated by a Sephadex G-25 gel filtration column; (b) Comparison of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) numbers and volcanic maps of DEGs between each two groups.
Wang, X., Yu H., Xing R., Liu S., Chen X., & Li P*. (2023). Structural properties, anti-fatigue and immunological effect of low molecular weight peptide from Monkfish. Journal of Functional Foods,105,105536.
(Text by WANG Xueqin, xueqinwang@qdio.ac.cn)
Media Contact:
ZHANG Yiyi
Institute of Oceanology
E-mail: zhangyiyi@qdio.ac.cn
(Editor: ZHANG Yiyi)