STTR Phase I: Recombinant production of anthocyanins in a GRAS microorganism

这个小型企业技术转移（STTR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是微生物通过发酵生产一组天然食用色素，称为花青素，这将有利于环境，食品工业和整个社会。发酵生产过程提供了一种“绿色化学”方法，解决了传统化学合成中经常遇到的问题，例如有害催化剂，并消除了从植物中提取天然化合物通常涉及的溶剂浪费问题。这项工作将有助于进一步了解花青素的生物合成途径，并降低这些化合物的生产成本。对生物化学途径和过程优化的创新和理解，将有助于为潜在的数十亿美元的全球市场提供高纯度天然食用色素，作为食品配料、保健产品和治疗应用。这个STTR一期项目建议设计通常被认为是安全的微生物（GRAS），目前用于几种食品添加剂的生产，作为生产各种花青素分子的微生物细胞工厂。利用代谢工程大肠杆菌重组菌株进行花青素生物合成的初步工作已经证明了这种生物经济方法的可行性。最初的工作将包括通过各种基因剪接方法在微生物中引入植物代谢途径。进一步的工艺优化将通过改善发酵条件和使用重组微生物进行初始放大来进行。这种微生物发酵策略将有助于通过利用合成生物学、代谢工程和其他新兴生物技术原理的生物制造方法来提高这种有益的天然食用色素的生产。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will be the microbial production by fermentation of a group of natural food colorants, called anthocyanins, which will benefit the environment, the food industry, and society as a whole. The fermentation production process provides a "green chemistry" approach to issues usually encountered in traditional chemical synthesis, such as hazardous catalysts, and eliminates a solvent waste problem typically associated with extraction of natural compounds from botanicals. The proposed work will lead to a greater understanding of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway, and result in a lower cost of production of these compounds. Innovation and understanding of the biochemical pathways and process optimization will help serve the potentially multi-billion dollar global market for high purity natural food colorants as food ingredients, as health care products, and in therapeutic applications.This STTR Phase I project proposes to engineer microorganisms that are Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS), and are currently used for the production of several food additives as microbial cell factories for the production of various anthocyanin molecules. Preliminary work on the biosynthesis of the anthocyanins, using metabolically engineered Escherichia coli recombinant strains, has demonstrated feasibility of this bio-economic approach. Initial work will involve the introduction of plant metabolic pathways in microorganisms via various gene-splicing methods. Further process optimization will be undertaken by improving fermentation conditions and by performing an initial scale-up using the recombinant microorganisms. This microbial fermentation strategy will help enhance the production of such beneficial natural food colorants through a biomanufactuing approach utilizing principles of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering and other emerging biotechnologies.