Research trends in production, separation, and identification of bioactive peptides from fungi – A critical review

Fungal-derived bioactive peptides (BPs) are increasingly attracting significant academic and industry research interest due to their high-quality protein content and potential environmentally friendly credentials. Fungi encompass a diverse range of species, some of which remain underexplored with demonstrated the ability to synthesise complex peptides with unique and potent bioactivities. While some recent reviews have focused on fungal protein sources and BPs, there remains a knowledge gap in the technologies and methods used to produce, isolate, and identify BPs from various fungal species. This article critically evaluates the strengths, challenges, and future directions of the recent methods and technologies employed in fungal BP research, addressing the limitations of traditional peptide production, separation, and identification methods. This review discusses multiple studies on using fungal strains to release BP from various food protein substrates through fermentation methods. Additionally, it highlights the production of BP from different fungal strains using endogenous and exogenous enzymes. The challenges associated with fungal cell wall disruption for BP production are addressed and several recent studies employing a combination of enzymes and innovative processing technologies to overcome these challenges are discussed. Moreover, the review covers various separation and purification techniques used in fungal BP studies, outlining their advantages and limitations. The role of genomics, advanced mass spectrometry, multi-omics approaches, in-silico resources, and bioinformatics tools for discovering BP from fungi are covered along with the application of fungal BPs in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmeceutical industries.