Profiling Analysis Reveals the Potential Contribution of Peptides to Human Adipocyte Differentiation.

Purpose Experimental design Peptide drugs provide promising regimes in anti-obesity treatment. In order to identify potential bioactive peptides involved in adipogenesis. The intracellular peptides between preadipocytes and adipocytes are compared by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The underlying biological function of the identified peptides are evaluated by gene ontology (GO) and pathway analysis of their precursors. To find more potential bioactive peptides, 50 peptide sequences are identified located in the functional domains with the use of the SMART and UniProt databases. Finally, the Open Targets Platform database is used to investigate the precursors related to metabolic diseases. Results Conclusions and clinical relevance A total of 181 downregulated peptides and 89 upregulated peptides after differentiation (fold change > 1.5 and p-value < 0.05) are identified. The GO and pathway analysis indicate that these differentially expressed peptides play a role in adipogenesis. A total of 10 putative peptides 6 to 26 amino acids in length are identified that might have bioactive effects in adipogenesis and metabolic diseases. On one hand, present preliminary research provides a better understanding of the intracellular peptides during adipocyte differentiation. On the other hand, it lays a foundation for discovering new peptide drugs in anti-obesity treatment.