Engineering insects for novel food/feed and waste management

昆虫在低碳食品生产方面具有巨大的潜力，如果将废物用作原料，也可以进行废物管理。该应用程序解决了工程生物学，以满足两个关键需求-（i）需要高效，低碳生产高质量的营养素（例如蛋白质，脂质）用于食品和饲料使用-食品系统（主要），以及（ii）需要生态友好的有机废物回收-环境解决方案。昆虫的大量饲养是一个有吸引力的解决方案，为每一个。昆虫是高效的饲料转化器，比牲畜甚至家禽更有效，同时需要更少的土地和更低的温室气体排放。大规模直接用于人类仍然是一个营销挑战，但主要应用包括鱼类和家禽饲料以及宠物食品已经可用。昆虫还提供粪便，以及可以从中提纯甲壳素等高价值产品的材料。此外，一些昆虫可以有效地饲养在低价值的有机废物上，将各种各样的输入材料转化为昆虫生物质。黑蝇（Hermetia illucens，BSF）-本提案的主题-可能是废物管理的典范，也是几个有吸引力的食物和饲料用途选择之一。这两种应用是重叠的，但又是不同的--不同的地区对输入材料有不同的规定，但以污水饲养的昆虫，例如，通常不能直接用作饲料，虽然有价值的副产品仍然可以从昆虫生物量中纯化。BSF因其生物转化营养物质的特殊能力而日益受到国际关注，劣质的有机废物可以成为动物的饲料和植物的肥料。由于BSF幼虫（BSFL）作为动物饲料的使用处于相对早期的阶段，研究自然集中在测试它可以用作食物的基质范围和优化生物转化效率的大规模饲养方法上。然而，只有这么多的人可以做选择性育种和大规模饲养-基本的生物限制仍然适用，尽管有最好的遗传学和饲养协议。BSF作为动物饲料的一些明显的局限性包括：与家蝇蛆、粉虫和成年蟋蟀相比，多不饱和脂肪酸含量较低，木质纤维素底物的转化效率低，对DDT和拟除虫菊酯敏感，这些杀虫剂可能存在于作物残留物中。简而言之，BSF具有巨大的潜力，但野生型昆虫并不是所有应用的理想选择-该提案旨在开发一个平台和原型，用于合理工程化的黑色士兵苍蝇（Hermetia illucens，BSF）。这具有广泛的潜在应用，其中我们开发了两个作为实际例子-通过允许增加使用被杀虫剂污染的废物来扩大其可以利用的输入材料的范围，以及调整昆虫的组成，这里是脂肪酸组成，以增加收获产品的价值。在未来，这样的平台可以为广泛的增强特性提供基础，例如消化目前不可消化的源材料，可能是木质纤维素废物，如谷物残茬，甚至是塑料。具有合适的酶和途径的节肢动物是已知的;工程平台将允许将特定的期望性状转移到顺从的底盘生物体如BSF。

Insects have enormous potential for low-carbon food production, also waste-management if using waste as feedstock. This application addresses engineering biology to address two critical needs - (i) the need for efficient, low-carbon production of high-quality nutrients (e.g. protein, lipid) for food and feed use - food systems (primary), and (ii) the need for eco-friendly recycling of organic waste - environmental solutions. Insect mass-rearing represents an attractive solution for each of these. Insects are highly efficient feed converters, much more so than livestock or even poultry, while also needing less land and with far lower greenhouse gas emissions. Direct use for humans at scale remains a marketing challenge, but major applications including fish and poultry feed, and pet food, are already available. Insects also provide frass, and material from which high-value products such as chitin may be purified. Additionally, some insects can be reared effectively on low-value organic waste, converting a wide range of input material into insect biomass. Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens, BSF) - the subject of this proposal - is perhaps the exemplar for waste management, and one of several attractive options for food and feed use. These two applications are overlapping but distinct - different territories have different rules about input material, but insects reared on sewage, for example, typically cannot be used directly for feed, though valuable by-products may still be purified from the insect biomass.BSF has increasingly garnered international attention for its exceptional ability to bio-convert nutrient-poor organic waste feed into body mass suitable for animal consumption and fertilisers for plants. As the use of BSF larvae (BSFL) as animal feed is at a relatively early stage, research has naturally focused on testing the range of substrates it can utilise as food and optimising mass rearing methods for bioconversion efficiency. However, there is only so much one can do with selective breeding and mass rearing - fundamental biological limitations will still apply despite having the best genetics and rearing protocol. Some obvious limitations of BSF as animal feed include: lower polyunsaturated fatty acid content compared to housefly maggots, mealworms, and adult crickets, inefficient conversion of lignocellulosic substrates, and susceptibility to DDT and pyrethroids, insecticides which may be present in crop residues. These would be extremely challenging to address by conventional breeding, but potentially amenable to an engineering approach.In short, BSF has enormous potential but wild-type insects are not ideal for all applications - this proposal aims to develop a platform and prototypes for rational engineering of black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens, BSF). This has a wide range of potential applications, of which we develop two as practical examples - to expand the range of input material it can utilise by allowing enhanced use of insecticide-contaminated waste, and to adjust the composition, here fatty acid composition, of the insect to add value to harvested product. In future, such a platform could provide a basis for a wide range of enhanced traits, for example digestion of currently indigestible source material, perhaps lignocellulosic waste such as cereal stubble, or even plastics. Arthropods with suitable enzymes and pathways are known; an engineering platform would allow specific desirable traits to be transferred to an amenable chassis organism such as BSF.