Animal Husbandry and Feed Science ›› 2026, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (2): 51-56.doi: 10.12160/j.issn.1672-5190.2026.02.007

• Animal Nutrition and Feed Science • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research Progress on the Antioxidant Effects of Bioactive Peptides

XU Xiaoyi, GAO Feng   

  1. College of Animal Science, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot 010018, China
  • Received:2025-12-10 Online:2026-03-30 Published:2026-06-25

Abstract: Oxidative stress is an important cause of body damage, decreased immunity and reduced production performance in livestock and poultry. Therefore, the development of green and safe natural antioxidants has become a research hotspot in the healthy breeding of livestock and poultry. Bioactive peptides are a class of small molecule substances with antibacterial, antioxidant, immunomodulatory and other physiological functions. They are widely found in animal and plant proteins and organisms. Among them, antioxidant peptides can alleviate or inhibit oxidative damage in the body. Due to their high activity and multi-target characteristics, antioxidant peptides have good development prospects in the fields of functional food, biomedicine and animal husbandry. This review systematically summarizes the related research results and comprehensively discusses the classification and sources, preparation technologies, antioxidant mechanisms, and activity evaluation methods of bioactive peptides. The material is mainly classified into two categories: plant-derived and animal-derived, with a wide range of raw material sources; the preparation methods mainly include direct extraction, enzymatic hydrolysis, microbial fermentation, chemical synthesis and recombinant DNA technology. Different preparation processes have their own advantages and disadvantages, among which enzymatic hydrolysis and microbial fermentation are more suitable for large-scale production. The antioxidant mechanism mainly includes scavenging free radicals, chelating metal ions, increasing the levels of endogenous antioxidants and regulating antioxidant-related signaling pathways. Its activity can be assessed by chemical evaluation and biological evaluation. In addition, this review discusses the practical application effects of bioactive peptides in livestock and poultry production, analyzes the shortcomings of current research, and provides perspectives on the optimization of preparation process and the realization path of action mechanism, aiming to provide theoretical references for the rational application and in-depth study of bioactive peptides.

Key words: bioactive peptides, oxidative stress, antioxidant peptides, mechanism of action

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