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A New Technology Could Completely Change The Dairy Market. Scientists Have Managed To Produce Milk Proteins Without Using Cows, With The Help Of Modified Bacteria. This Opens The Door For Vegan Cheeses And Yogurts With The Same Nutritional Value As Traditional Products, But In A Sustainable Way.
Scientists Have Achieved Something Unprecedented: Using Bacteria To Produce Essential Milk Proteins Without Any Ingredients Of Animal Origin.
This Discovery Paves The Way For Vegan Cheeses And Yogurts That Mimic Traditional Products At The Molecular Level, Without Lactose, Animal Cruelty, Or High Environmental Impact.
Casein Without Animal Origin
The Study, Published In Trends In Biotechnology, Presents Two Methods For Producing Casein. This Protein Is Fundamental In Dairy Products And Highly Valued For Its Nutritional Value And Functionality.
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It Provides Essential Amino Acids And Is Used In Both Infant And Adult Nutrition.
With A Global Market Valued At US$ 2.7 Billion In 2023, The Search For Animal-Origin Alternatives Has Been Growing.
The Solution May Lie In The Use Of Modified Microorganisms To Produce These Proteins.
Phosphorylation Challenge
Industries Already Use Microorganisms To Manufacture Supplements And Enzymes. But Reproducing Casein With All Its Characteristics Required Something Extra.
The Main Difficulty Lies In Phosphorylation, A Process That Adds Phosphate Groups To Proteins.
This Step Is Essential For Casein To Bind To Calcium, Forming Micelles — Structures That Ensure Stability To Milk And Help In The Transport Of Calcium And Phosphate In The Body.
Two Innovative Strategies
To Overcome This Challenge, Scientists Adopted Two Approaches.
First, They Modified Bacteria To Coexpress Three Kinase Proteins From Bacillus Subtilis. These Enzymes Are Capable Of Phosphorylating Proteins, Imitating The Natural Process.
Then, They Created A Phosphomimetic Version Of αs1-Casein. In This Version, The Serine Residues Normally Phosphorylated Were Replaced With Aspartic Acid.
The Aim Was To Simulate The Negative Charge Of Phosphorylation And Its Functional Properties.
Promising Results
The Tests Conducted With The Two Versions Of Bacterial Casein Showed Good Results. The Ability To Bind To Calcium Was High, And Both The Digestibility And The Structure Of The Proteins Were Comparable To Those Of Bovine Casein.
The Phosphorylated Version More Faithfully Mimics The Protein Of Natural Milk. The Phosphomimetic Version Offers A Simpler Solution To Achieve Similar Functionalities.
Despite The Advances, Researchers Warn That Additional Quantitative Analyses Are Still Necessary.
The Goal Is To Better Understand The Potential Of These Microbial Proteins And Enable Their Large-Scale Production For Sustainable And Cruelty-Free Foods.
Study Available At CELL.
Exciting breakthrough! 😊 Scientists have engineered bacteria to produce milk proteins without cows, paving the way for sustainable, vegan dairy products with the same nutritional value. This could revolutionise the dairy market! 💡