The common octopus is a cephalopod species subject to active fisheries, with great potential in the aquaculture and food industry, and which serves as a model species for biomedical and behavioral studies. The analysis of the skin mucus allows us to study their health in a non-invasive way, by using a hardly exploited discard of octopus in the fishing sector. A shotgun proteomics approach combined with liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) using an Orbitrap-Elite instrument was used to create a reference dataset from octopus skin mucus. The final proteome compilation was investigated by integrated in-silico studies, including Gene Ontology (GO), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway, network studies, and prediction and characterization analysis of potential bioactive peptides. This work presents the first proteomic analysis of the common octopus skin mucus proteome. This library was created by merging 5937 identified spectra of 2038 different peptides. A total of 510 non-redundant proteins were identified. Obtained results show proteins closely related to the defense, which highlight the role of skin mucus as the first barrier of defense and the interaction with the environment. Finally, the potential of the bioactive peptides with antimicrobial properties, and their possible application in biomedicine, pharmaceutical, and nutraceutical industry was addressed.
Keywords: Octopus vulgaris; bioactive peptides; food; mass spectrometry; proteomics; skin mucus.