Advancements in Identification of Low-Molecular-Weight Peptides in Food Protein Hydrolysates

Peptides have become the focus of current research due to their diverse biological functional activities, good digestibility, and wide application in the field of food. Although predicting the role of specific peptide segments in protein hydrolysates in the overall protein function is of great significance, their complex structure poses huge challenges to the research. Especially for peptides comprising 2–5 amino acid residues (molecular weight range: 200–600 Da), although they have high biological activity, there are still difficulties in structural identification. Therefore, the sequence identification of peptides becomes a key link. This article reviews the basic properties and sequence prediction analysis methods of polypeptides, discusses the application of auxiliary technologies such as sample pretreatment techniques, the selection of detection equipment, and spectral techniques, and finally summarizes the research status of peptide identification coupling technology, providing a guiding direction for subsequent research.