**Acknowledgement**

We are grateful to Ms. Masa Vidovic and the entire staff of InTech for helpful advices and the opportunity given to us. We would also like to thank Mr. Richard Shigwedha for the good cooperation.

<sup>\*</sup> Corresponding Author

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**Chapter 13**

© 2013 Pihlanto, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Lactic Fermentation and Bioactive Peptides** 

Fermented milk products have naturally high nutritional value, and as an extra benefit many health-promoting effects, such as improvement of lactose metabolism, reduction of serum cholesterol and reduction of cancer risk [1]. The beneficial health effects associated with some fermented dairy products may, in part, be attributed to the release of bioactive peptide sequences during the fermentation process. Numerous peptides and peptide fractions, having bioactive properties have been isolated from fermented dairy products. These activities include immunomodulatory, cytomodulatory, hypocholesterolemic, antioxidative, antimicrobial, mineral binding, opioid and bone formation activities. Many recent articles and book chapters have reviewed the release of various bioactive peptides

Many industrially utilized dairy starter cultures are highly proteolytic. The use of bioactive peptides producers microbial cultures (starter and non-starter) may allow the development new fermented dairy products. The proteolytic system of lactic acid bacteria e.g. *Lactococcus (L.) lactis, Lactobacillus (Lb.) helveticus* and *Lb. delbrueckii* ssp. *bulgaricus*, is already well characterized. This system consists of a cell wall-bound proteinase and a number of distinct intracellular peptidases, including endopeptidases, aminopeptidases, tripeptidases and dipeptidases [6]. *Lb. helveticus* are known to have high proteolytic activities [7], causing the release of oligopeptides from digestion of milk proteins [8]. These oligopeptides can be a direct source of bioactive peptides following hydrolysis by gastrointestinal enzymes. Rapid progress has been made in recent years to elucidate the biochemical and genetic characterization of these enzymes. The fact that the activities of peptidases are affected by growth conditions makes it possible to manipulate the formation of peptides to a certain

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the single leading cause of death for both males and females in technologically advanced countries in the world. In lesser-developed countries it generally ranks among the top five causes of death. The World Health Organization

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Anne Pihlanto

**1. Introduction** 

extent [9].

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51692

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

from milk proteins through microbial proteolysis [2-5].
