Isolation of Bacillus altitudinis 5-DSW with Protease Activity from Deep-Sea Mineral Water and Preparation of Functional Active Peptide Fractions from Chia Seeds

In this study, we successfully isolated Bacillus strains with high protease activity from deep-sea mineral water in Korea and used them to obtain functional peptide fractions from chia seeds. The obtained Bacillus strains showed high similarity of 99% with B. altitude with long rod type (named B. altitudinis 5-DSW) and showed high protease activity at 40°C and 70% of the activity was remained even at 70°C. The defatted chia seed protein (15–50 kDa) was treated with crude protease from B. altitudinis 5-DSW and digested into small peptides below 20kDa. The obtained chia seed peptides showed 3 times and 1.5 times higher antioxidant activity in DPPH and ABTs radical scavenging assays, respectively. Moreover, chia seed peptides showed enhanced AChE inhibitory activity with an IC 50 value of 14.48 ± 0.88µg/mL and BChE inhibition activity with IC 50 value of 10.90 ± 0.80µg/ml. Our results indicate that the newly isolated B. altitudinis 5-DSW and chia seed protein hydrolysates have potential applications in biotechnology and functional food development, enhancing the nutritional quality and value-added utilization of chia byproducts.