Special Issue "Screening, Separation and Applications of Metal-Chelating Peptides"

Dear Colleagues,

Metal-chelating peptides (MCPs) are a class of peptides that do naturally exist in living organisms notably in plants, microorganisms, or humans. Wherever their presence is, these MCPs play various roles. For instance, they enable : (i) the transport of metals in vivo, (ii) avoid metal precipitation, (iii) protect a given organism against metal excess in their environment, (iv) play an indirect antioxidant role while inhibiting the Haber–Weiss and Fenton reaction, (v) reduce the development of some bacteria, etc.

Considering all the potential applications of these metal-chelating peptides in nature, many research scientists have tried to produce this interesting class of peptides via a bioinpired approach. Hence, these metal-chelating peptides can also be produced either through chemical synthesis or through biocatalysis from protein hydrolysis. In this last way of production, several studies have reported the presence of MCPs in peptide hydrolysates produced from various proteins extracted from coproducts in a biorefinery strategy. Additionally, according to the nature of the metal ion complexed, various applications can be considered going from nutrition, health, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, biomaterials or electronics, etc.

Regardless of the complexity of the samples in which metal-chelating peptides are contained (natural extract, synthetic peptides or complex mixture of peptides in hydrolysate), their screening and their separation strategy are a key step for the valorization of these molecules. For an efficient screening and separation, the understanding of metal ion complexation phenomena by these metal-binding peptides is essential and must be deeply investigated. Further, we hope that the interdisciplinary scientific community will gather their knowledge and their recent results on this topic in this Special Issue entitled “Screening, Separation, and Applications of Metal-Chelating Peptides”, going from the molecular scale up to their process scale.

Dr. Katalin Selmeczi
Dr. Laetitia Canabady-Rochelle
Guest Editors

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• metal-chelating peptides
• screening
• separation
• simulation
• complexation
• coordination