Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) seed: A review on bioactives and biomedical activities.

The processing of tomato fruit into puree, juices, ketchup, sauces, and dried powders generates a significant amount of waste in the form of tomato pomace, which includes seeds and skin. Tomato processing by-products, particularly seeds, are reservoirs of health-promoting macromolecules, such as proteins (bioactive peptides), carotenoids (lycopene), polysaccharides (pectin), phytochemicals (flavonoids), and vitamins (α-tocopherol). Health-promoting properties make these bioactive components suitable candidates for the development of novel food and nutraceutical products. This review comprehensively demonstrates the bioactive compounds of tomato seeds along with diverse biomedical activities of tomato seed extract (TSE) for treating cardiovascular ailments, neurological disorders, and act as antioxidant, anticancer, and antimicrobial agent. Utilization of bioactive components can improve the economic feasibility of the tomato processing industry and may help to reduce the environmental pollution generated by tomato by-products.

Utilization of blood by-products: An in silico and experimental combined study for BSA usage.

In order to exploit industrial discards, protein enzymatic hydrolysis is a currently popular methodology for obtaining bioactive peptides. However, once released, most promising peptides have to be selected from the mixture. In this work, the suitability of pepsin (EC 3.4.23.1) to hydrolyse serum albumin in order to obtain bioactive peptides was assessed. Then, a suitable process to obtain best separation of bioactive peptides was evaluated, using polyethersulfone membranes at different pH values. Serum albumin was easily hydrolysed by pepsin, reaching a DH value of the 65.64 ± 1.57% of the maximum possible. A 23.25% of the identified peptides possessed high bioactivity scores (greater than 0.5), and one of them had reported bioactivity (LLL). Charge mechanisms always predominated over the sieve effect, and best transmission was accomplished at pH values close to the peptides isoelectric points. Basic and neutral peptides with the highest scores were always the most transmitted. Membrane material had greater influence than NMWCO in determining peptide transmission. In order to obtain purified fractions rich in peptides with high bioactivity scores from serum albumin, polyethersulfone membranes (applicable to industrial scale) of 5 kDa MWCO should be used at basic pH values after pepsin digestion.

Influence of heat pre-treatment on BSA tryptic hydrolysis and peptide release.

In contrast with other food proteins, such as ß-lactoglobulin or caseins, intensely studied for bioactive peptide production, relatively little attention has been paid to serum albumin, the main blood protein, even though blood disposal is a severe problem for meat processors. In this study, serum albumin was hydrolysed with trypsin after several heat treatments and using different enzyme concentrations. The degree of hydrolysis reached and the peptide sequences released over time were evaluated. Large differences in enzyme-to-substrate ratios (1:50, 1:100 and 1:200) led to similar degree of hydrolysis values (31.92±1.43%, 31.08±3.09% and 26.21±0.71%), and did not alter the number of peptides released. However, thermal treatment enhanced significantly (p<0.05) both the degree of hydrolysis (up to 50.41±1.90%) and the number and amount of the majority of peptides obtained, all with potential bioactivity (28 peptides in the native hydrolysate, 39 in the thermally treated).