Fragmentomics of proteins and natural oligopeptides

The term fragmentomics is grounded and defined. Theoretical structure-function analysis of all possible fragments of a protein molecule was performed under the concept of fragmentomics to determine the regions that could be potential sources of regulatory oligopeptides. For this purpose, we used the data on the primary structure of bovine hemoglobin, the information contained in the EROP-Moscow database on the structures and functions of natural oligopeptides, and a specialized software package. This analysis revealed natural nonhemoglobin oligopeptides containing hemoglobin fragments and natural oligopeptides with the structure precisely coinciding with hemoglobin fragments. The most abundant of them are neuropeptides, antimicrobial oligopeptides, and hormones. It was demonstrated that the tetrapeptide and larger fragments of hemoglobin identified in nonhemoglobin oligopeptides and possessing a mentioned activity are present in the amino acid sequences of experimentally determined hemoglobin oligopeptides with the same function. The proposed approach allowed us to discover new potentially active sites in the hemoglobin amino acid sequence not yet studied experimentally. The possibility of natural formation of regulatory oligopeptides from hemoglobin molecules and other food proteins is discussed, as well as the generation of an exogenous oligopeptide pool in the gastrointestinal tract, and how the results match the concept of natural continuum of regulatory oligopeptides.