In vitro antifungal activity of bioactive peptides produced by Lactobacillus plantarum against Aspergillus parasiticus and Penicillium expansum C. Luz a , F. Saladino a , F.B. Luciano b , J. Ma ~ nes a , G. Meca a, * a Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Toxicology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Valencia, Av. Vicent Andr es Estell es s/n, 46100 Burjassot, Spain b School of Life Sciences, Pontifícia Universidade Cat olica do Paran a, Curitiba, Paran a, Brazil article info Article history: Received 11 October 2016 Received in revised form 8 February 2017 Accepted 30 March 2017 Available online 31 March 2017 Keywords: Antimicrobial peptides Antifungal activity Lactobacillus plantarum Spoilage fungi abstract Food spoilage caused by mycotoxigenic moulds represents an important problem in food security. The antimicrobial peptides are compounds of natural origin constituted by a variable number (5e100) of amino acids held together through peptide bonds. In this work, the cell free supernatants (CFSs) con- taining peptides obtained from four strains of LAB were lyophilized, filtered and tested to determine the antifungal activity against Aspergillus Parasiticus and Penicillium expansum. CFS obtained by Lactobacillus plantarum showed the highest inhibition activity. CFS was fractionated by size exclusion chromatography and injected into the liquid chromatography coupled to diode array detector. One of the recollected fractions resulted interesting for the presence of three peaks that were purified by the technique of the LC-DAD using a semi preparative C18 column. Finally, the antifungal activity of the purified peptides was studied against A. Parasiticus and P. expansum in liquid medium. The MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry was used for the peptides identification. The three purified peptides presented an amino acidic sequence identified by a bioinformatics program of SGADTTFLTK, LVGKKVQTF, and GTLIGQDYK. The first peptide purified reduced 58% and 73% the growth of P. expansum and A. parasiticus, respectively, in liquid me- dium after 48 h incubation. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction Mould deterioration of food, feed and other agricultural com- modities can be responsible for considerable economical losses. Thirty percent of crop yields are destroyed and more than 30% of perishable crops are damaged in developing countries by lowering their quality and quantity. Furthermore, moulds produce com- pounds potentially toxics to the consumers called mycotoxins which can cause illness and death (Pawlowska, Zannini, Coffey, & Arendt, 2012). High incidences of mould and mycotoxin contami- nation in food and feed are due to fungi ubiquitous nature, to their ability to colonize different substrates and to the lack of effective control measures (Hassan, Zhou, & Bullerman, 2015). Currently, food industry depends on chemical preservatives to extend the shelf life and control the growth of spoilage fungi. The consumer's awareness about the health hazards associated with chemicals has recently increased, and they are demanding for processed foods that are free of preservatives. There are many natural alternative preservatives produced by certain microorgan- isms, however these microorganisms have to be non-toxic, easy to grow and require simple media for cultivation. Lactic acid bacteria (LABs) are a known potential source for generating a variety of secondary metabolites such as bacteriocines, organic acids and peptides (Cizeikiene, Juodeikiene, Paskevicius, & Bartkiene, 2013). In the past decade the interest for antifungal LABs has increased and different studies have showed that many LAB strains have the potential to combat the proliferation of fungi in various food and feed materials (Rouse, Harnett, Vaughan, & Van Sinderen, 2008; Dalie, Deschamps, & Richard-Forget, 2010; Mauch, Dal Bello, Cof- fey, & Arendt, 2010; Gerez, Torino, Rollan & De Valdez, 2009; Dal Bello et al., 2007). Consumers are demanding the replacement of artificial chemical preservatives by natural biopreservatives to reduce fungal contamination in foods (Brul & Coote, 1999; Crowley, Mahony, & Van Sinderen, 2013; Reis, Paula, Casarotti, & Penna, 2012; Schnurer & Magnusson, 2005). LABs, due to their long his- tory of safe use in food and feed fermentations (Hugenholtz, 2013; * Corresponding author. E-mail address: giuseppe.meca@uv.es (G. Meca). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect LWT - Food Science and Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lwt http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2017.03.053 0023-6438/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-NDlicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). LWT - Food Science and Technology 81 (2017) 128e135