## 1 Introduction  
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic disturbances that increase the risk of stroke and cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia are the principal components of metabolic syndrome [1]. This syndrome affects pediatric populations [2] as well as older people [3] and is a public health issue. The current treatment is based on lifestyle interventions, particularly by modification of the diet and an increase in physical activity to prevent cardiovascular complications [4]. Drugs can also be used to treat unique components of the syndrome [5]. The principal aim of treatment is to prevent or delay the complications of CVD, but this primary intervention is only effective for weight control [6].  
An alternative metabolic syndrome treatment is the use of bioactive peptides--short sequences of amino acids that improve human health. These peptides can be released from both animal and vegetable proteins, and more than 1500 sequences have been reported [7]. Bioactive peptides have shown multiple beneficial effects on human health such as antihypertensive, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, immunomododulatory, anti-cancer, lipid-lowering, antioxidant effects, and dipeptidyl-peptidase 4(DPPIV) inhibition. Some of these are useful in the treatment of metabolic syndrome [8; 9], so bioactive peptides or proteins that contain these peptides can be part of functional foods [10].  
In silico analysis is a valuable tool for predicting specific functions and/or for establishing strategies to deliver bioactive peptides from proteins. For example, [PERSON] et al. [11] analyzed \(\alpha\)s\({}_{1}\), \(\alpha\)s\({}_{2}\), \(\beta\), and \(\kappa\)-casein from yak milk and found that these proteins have peptide fragments in their sequence with reported biological activity, like angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) and DPPIV inhibitors. They proposed a strategy to release them with a tandem digestion; similarly, [PERSON] et al. [12] evaluated the potential of releasing bioactive peptides from patatin after in silico digestion with different proteases and they found multiple fragments with ACEI and DPPIV activity.  
Bioactive peptides can be obtained by chemical synthesis; nevertheless, the production process can be non-viable [13]. Two principal methods are used to produce bioactive peptides. In the first, a protein or protein mixture is subjected to hydrolysis with one or more proteolytic enzymes. The other production method is microbial fermentation and involves the use of bacteria or yeast, rather than pure or crude enzymes, to hydrolyze proteins in the culture broth [8]. In both cases, the starting material to be hydrolyzed consists of food proteins. Clearly, the amount and type of bioactive peptides than can be obtained by such methods are determined by the amino acid sequences of the starting material. Here, we propose the use of protein engineering methods to increase the number and diversity of bioactive peptides that can be obtained via the hydrolysis of a particular protein. To do this, we first defined a set of bioactive peptides that can treat metabolic syndrome. We then evaluated a group of representative vegetable proteins to determine the number and type of bioactive peptides included in their natural sequences. Considering that plants provide approximately 58% of proteins that humans consume [14], seeds are the main source of protein consumed by humans [15]. Interestingly, proteins from plants are associated with a lower incidence of CVD [16]. Thus, seed storage proteins were appraised in this work. We later designed mutations to increase the number and type of bioactive peptides. Finally, we evaluated the digestion patterns of the modified proteins in silico. These proteins can be produced by heterologous expression in bacteria or yeast.