Purification of a radical scavenging peptide from fermented mussel sauce and its antioxidant properties

Fermented marine blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) derived peptides were purified using ion exchange, gel filtration and high performance liquid chromatographic techniques to identify a potent radical scavenging activity. The hepta-peptide sequence, HFGBPFH (MW 962 kDa) was found to be highly effective for radical scavenging and was named as mussel derived radical scavenging peptide (MRSP). Under the assay conditions, MRSP could scavenge superoxide (98%), hydroxyl (96%), carbon-centered (91%) and DPPH radicals (72%) at 200 μg/ml concentration and the respective IC50 values were found to be 21, 34, 52 and 96 μM. In addition, MRSP exhibited a strong lipid peroxidation inhibition at 54 μM concentration and it was higher than α-tocopherol. Further, it exhibited a 95% higher Fe2+ chelating effect than citrate. Moreover, MRSP could enhance the viability of oxidation induced cultured human cells by 76% following 75 μg/ml of treatment. Therefore, these results identified MRSP as a potent natural antioxidant, which performs its activity via different mechanism of actions.