An Overview About Pharmaceutical Grade Fungal Protein and Peptides
摘要
The fungal pharmaceutical- and nutraceutical-grade products enrich the markets and the pharmacies. There are many proteins and peptides of fungal origin. The new technology enables recombinant proteins and peptides to be produced from fungi and from other creatures. Insulin, the human polypeptide hormone, is produced in yeast. Enzymes, active proteins, peptides, protein with nutritional values, and other forms are produced by fungi. The production process was optimized using different strategies such as classical and modern mutagenesis, biochemical engineering, fermentation optimization, use of recombinant strains, heterologous expression, and protein and peptide engineering. Other strategies are the use of fermented foods that proved to have nutraceutical use such as mushrooms, kefir, fermented milk, and other fermented foods. Microbes such as some yeast species, edible mushrooms, and some fungi can be consumed directly as single-cell proteins or mycoproteins with much nutritional and medicinal value. They have many useful ingredients, are high in protein content, peptides, vitamins, etc. A large number of useful fungi as well as their products are described in this chapter. Respective numbers of the fungal protein-based products, the production process, the ideas, the old and new technologies, etc., were discussed. As eukaryotic organisms, fungi have unique properties to support production of native or recombinant pharmaceutical-grade proteins and peptides.