SBIR Phase I: Improving food safety using hyper-stable enzyme cleaning products

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是通过将超稳定酶整合到清洁产品中来提高食品安全。 工业酶是一个不断增长的、价值数十亿美元的绿色产业，它减少了能源、水和苛刻的化学品的使用，同时提高了许多部门的工艺效率。尽管工业酶的广泛应用和成功，但其应用和经济影响受到可用的狭窄热和化学操作范围的严重限制。该项目的目标是开发一种新的酶平台，使酶的生产具有极大的热稳定性和酸稳定性，使这些酶能够应用于以前无法使用酶的行业。最初的目标市场是乳制品清洁市场，这些上级产品具有提高产量的潜力，因为它们可以更快地清洁，更好地去除蛋白质污染物和生物膜，减少用水量，预防食源性疾病，并改善食品卫生。SBIR第一阶段项目提出使用独特的超稳定酶生产平台生产用于乳制品清洁应用的酶。尽管来自极端生物的基因已经被研究了四十多年，但由于它们与传统蛋白质表达系统的不相容性，它们的大部分商业潜力尚未被捕获。我们的酶的超稳定性使它们能够与热、酸、洗涤剂清洁步骤一起工作，以更有效地去除食品加工设备中的生物分子和生物膜污染物。该计划是测试这些酶制剂的实验室和真实的世界样品从当地的牛奶场，并确定其效力，以清洁膜和去除生物分子和生物膜污染物。该项目还旨在优化酶生产平台，以提高利润率。通过将极端酶应用于清洁乳制品加工设施，该项目将展示可生物降解酶的力量，通过在更短的时间内提供上级清洁，同时使用更少的水和更少的刺激性化学品，提高食品安全。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to improve food safety by integrating hyper-stable enzymes into cleaning products. Industrial enzymes are a growing, multi-billion dollar green industry that reduces energy, water, and harsh chemical use while improving process efficiency in many sectors. Despite the broad use and success of industrial enzymes, their application and economic impact has been severely limited by the narrow thermal and chemical operational ranges available. The goals of this project are to develop a new enzyme platform that allows production of enzymes with greatly increased thermal and acid stability, allowing these enzymes to be applied in industries that have not previously been accessible to enzymes. The initial target market is the dairy cleaning market, where these superior products have the potential to increase production due to faster cleaning, better removal of protein contaminants and biofilms, reduced water use, prevention of food borne illnesses, and improved food hygiene.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to use a unique hyperstable enzyme production platform to generate enzymes for commercial use in dairy cleaning applications. Although the genes from extreme organisms have been studied for over forty years, much of their commercial potential has not been captured due to their incompatibility with traditional protein expression systems. The hyperstability of our enzymes allows them to work with hot, acidic, detergent cleaning steps to more effectively remove biomolecules and biofilm contaminants from food processing equipment. The plan is to test these enzyme formulations on laboratory and real world samples from local dairies and determine their efficacy to clean membranes and to remove biomolecule and biofilm contaminants. The project also aims to optimize the enzyme production platform to improve profit margins. By applying extreme enzymes to cleaning dairy processing facilities, this project will demonstrate the power of biodegradable enzymes to improve food safety by providing superior cleaning in less time while using less water and fewer harsh chemicals.