Contemporary bioinformatics and cheminformatics support for food peptidomics

The aim of this publication is to discuss the role and examples of applications and challenges for computer tools applied in food peptidomics, a research area merging proteomics and metabolomics, focused on the entire set of peptides in a raw material or product. It encompasses the characterization of a peptidome, its properties, bioactivity, and fate during digestion or technological processes. Bioinformatics and cheminformatics tools serve to support all steps of workflow. They are necessary because the number of peptides possibly present in peptidomes is too big to be characterized by experiments only. On the other hand, only experiments can provide data enabling the development of programs. Tools for work on peptides are available via metabases and metaservers, that is, websites offering access to multiple databases or programs. New tools are launched every year, while the others cease to exist. Ensuring the quality and continuity of operation of computer tools is also a challenge.