ASMS 2021 Wednesday Morning Session: Food Safety & Chemistry

This ASMS Wednesday morning session, entitled, “Food Safety & Chemistry: Foodomics, Allergens, Bacteria, Foods, and Supplements,” will be chaired by David Schroeder (Kraft Heinz) It covers multiple techniques associated with the analytical science of food safety. This session will be held in room 114, and kicks off with a talk on characterization of small bioactive peptides in food, from Yu-Ping Huang and Daniela Barile of the University of California, Davis.

Small peptides with 2–4 amino acids are commonly present in foods and may possess potent bioactivities. However, doing this analysis using liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) is challenging. LC–MS/MS analysis followed by database search is frequently used in food peptidomics analysis. This analytical approach typically only identifies medium-sized peptides with ≥ 5 amino acids but ignores small peptides. De novo sequencing can potentially identify small peptides but often cannot achieve unambiguous full-length sequencing. The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of utilizing dimethyl labeling, which is known for signal enhancement of specific ions, to facilitate small peptide full-length sequencing. This method was then applied by Huang to analyze the peptides present in almond and pulse processing streams. This study represents the first application of dimethyl labeling to the characterization of food-derived small peptides for bioactive peptide identification.