Project

Innovative recovery of alternative meat proteins

Plant-based products still have a different taste, colour, nutrition and texture profile compared to animal-based products. Recently, yeast precision fermentation gained a lot of interest, since this technique could offer a solution to induce the quality of plant-based and animal-free products. In this context, this project aims to develop generalisable downstream processing routes for the recovery of bovine meat proteins derived from precision fermentation and research the functionality of these proteins in plant-based products.

Background

In recent years, plant-based proteins gained a lot of interest since they have a significantly reduced impact on the environment compared to animal-based proteins. Nevertheless, this group of proteins still faces some major challenges. Firstly, plant-based proteins are regarded as lower-quality compared to animal-based proteins, since they contain lower quantities of essential amino acids and have a generally lower digestibility. Secondly, the taste, colour and texture remain less appealing to consumers compared to their animal-based counterparts. Therefore, new protein sources for enriching plant-based proteins should be explored.

The production of animal-like proteins via precision fermentation has gotten a lot of interest. This technology utilises genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to produce high-quality food proteins. Yeast species serve as ideal host organisms for precision fermentation due to their eukaryotic nature, enabling the proper protein folding and addition of post-translational modifications.

Following the production of the desired food protein through precision fermentation, downstream processing (DSP) is initiated for its recovery and purification. The goal of DSP is to remove impurities and isolate a final fraction, which contains the intact target protein at a sufficient purity to ensure its functionality. In addition, other valuable components of the biomass can be recovered and valorized when a multiproduct DSP approach is applied. The whole DSP performance is depending on many different biomass, cultivation and process parameters and therefore the development of a high-yielding DSP could face many challenges. Hence, there is a need for generalizable DSP approaches for the recovery of functional proteins produced through precision fermentation.

Project description

Heme proteins are responsible for the red/brownish colour and the specific ‘meaty’ flavour of animal-based products. In addition, the heme iron is well absorbed by the human gastrointestinal tract compared to the non-heme iron derived from plants. Consequently, the addition of precision fermentation derived heme proteins to plant-based products could improve their taste, appearance and nutritional value.

The aim of this project is to develop, characterise and finetune two generalisable DPS approaches for the recovery of recombinant bovine hemoglobin and assess the functionality and application of the recovered protein fraction. To achieve this different tasks have been specified:

  1. Construction (DTU) and cultivation (BPE) of a yeast strain for the production of bovine hemoglobin.
  2. Development of a DSP route, using a natural deep eutectic solvents (NaDES)-assisted membrane filtration for the purification of bovine hemoglobin (BPE).
  3. Development of a DSP route, using hexametaphosphate complexation for the purification of bovine hemoglobin (FPE).
  4. Assessment of the functionality and applications of the recovered bovine hemoglobin fractions (FPE).
  5. Scaling up of the optimal DSP conditions at AlgaePARC 2.0 and conducting a techno-economic and sustainability analysis (BPE).

Thesis projects:

There are different topics available for a thesis within this project. If you are interested, feel free to contact Tim Rammelaere.