BIOPEP-UWM database — present and future

Abstract

The BIOPEP-UWM database has recently become a standard tool supporting food peptidomics. The BIOPEP-UWM website provides an access to the databases annotating the following groups of compounds: proteins, bioactive peptides, allergenic proteins and their epitopes, sensory peptides and amino acids, peptides with bioactivity predicted in silico, as well as amino acids with modifications. The database enables, for example, finding bioactive or taste-affecting fragments in protein or peptide sequences, calculating quantitative parameters describing proteins as precursors of bioactive peptides, and simulating proteolysis. It is applied for works harnessing bioinformatics alone or integrating in silico predictions and calculations with laboratory experiments. Apart from the above, the future plan envisages the extension of BIOPEP-UWM applications as a tool supporting design of technological processes in the food industry as well as food science education.