Methanol protein is a single-cell protein produced by culturing microorganisms using methanol as a carbon source. It has the advantages of low cost, stable and controllable quality. Methyl protein is also considered an effective alternative to food and feed protein.
Recently, the nutritional resources synthetic biology team led by researcher Wu Xin of the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the support of the "Protein Feed Bioengineering Manufacturing Frontier Technology and New Product Creation" project, biosynthesized one-carbon methanol raw materials in single cells. New breakthroughs have been made in protein. This study provides a new strategy for analyzing the regulatory mechanism of efficient utilization of carbon and nitrogen sources and directional synthesis of methanol-protein in Pichia pastoris, and also lays the foundation for breaking through the economic threshold of methanol-protein biomanufacturing. Relevant research results were published in the international journals "Microbial Cell Factory" and "Biofuels and Bioproduct Technology"
Methanol protein can replace natural plant protein
At present, my country's dependence on foreign countries for bulk agricultural products is still high. Among them, the foreign dependence on protein raw materials such as soybeans has exceeded 80% for more than ten consecutive years. High dependence on imported nutritional resources has seriously threatened my country's food supply security. It is urgent to seek new protein resources to replace soybean and other crop proteins.
"Single-cell protein is regarded as an important substitute for food and feed protein production. This protein is a bacterial protein produced through microbial fermentation." Wu Xin introduced that the protein content in bacteria is as high as 40%-85%, which is far from Higher protein content than in natural plants. At the same time, the bacterial cells have complete amino acid components and high availability. They also contain nutrients such as vitamins, inorganic salts, fats and sugars, and can partially replace fish meal, soybeans, meat and skimmed milk powder.
Compared with obtaining protein through traditional planting methods, single-cell protein production is not affected by the natural environment and has a higher yield. With the same output, the land use efficiency for single-cell protein production is more than 1,000 times higher than that for crop cultivation.
