Engineered Recombinant Strategies to Organogel Design for Food Product Formulations

实现食品工程的新策略对于允许转向植物性食品和替代动物源性产品至关重要。在食品工业中，球蛋白、白蛋白和酪蛋白等分子通常用于乳剂的配方和稳定。在没有热处理的情况下，对凝固和相关流变特性的控制对于食品的稳定配方很重要，然而很少有工业上可行的策略允许这种工艺。此外，组织工程领域也需要新的策略来设计可用于软组织修复和愈合的水凝胶支架。乳剂和有机凝胶是此类应用的有吸引力的材料，因为除了力学和粘弹性特性外，它们还可以控制纳米到微观结构，但需要新的支架蛋白工程来控制界面和体流变特性。该项目将利用超分子相互作用来组装和配制食品和组织工程的有机凝胶支架。允许这种设计的基于蛋白质的起始材料还没有被设计出来。本项目将研究调节乳液和有机凝胶的整体流变学和机械性能的多尺度组装过程。将解决三个主要的知识空白：(a)控制有机水胶体的相变和凝胶化的能力；(b)调节所得有机凝胶的纳米到宏观机械性能的能力；(c)复制天然肉类食品的多尺度复杂结构的能力。我们的方法将包括基于短肽片段初步评估不同类型的超分子组装，在工程重组支架蛋白与相关目标肽鉴定之前。这些见解将建立一套规则，指导分层蛋白质为基础的有机凝胶食品生物材料的合理设计。该项目所带来的进步将为发现高功能成分（例如，用于超分子偶联的酶和结合伙伴）和结构蛋白质开辟新的途径，这些蛋白质将成为分子组装过程的核心。该行业合作伙伴将通过使用合成生物学方法，将这些成分嵌入工业上可行的配方中，以提高感官体验，并有可能改善可持续植物性食品的营养状况。例如，通过将表达转移到水稻或其他种子等基于植物的系统，可以扩大这些策略的商业可行性。通过设计以有机凝胶为基础的食品加工新策略，该项目将解决BBSRC在食品、营养和健康方面的战略重点。此外，通过设计重组蛋白的自组装和控制有机凝胶的流变特性，它将解决合成生物学的优先事项。与工业界的密切合作将使已开发的系统能够转化，并解决工业生物技术新战略方法的优先事项。最后，设计的有机凝胶可能会在其他领域找到应用，如组织工程，与生命过程中健康老龄化的优先事项相一致

Novel strategies enabling the engineering of food products are essential to allow a shift towards plant-based food products and the replacement of animal origin products. Molecules such as globulins, albumins and casein are commonly used for the formulation and stabilisation of emulsions in the food industry. The control of setting and associated rheological properties, in the absence of thermal processing is important for stable formulation of food products, however few industrially-viable strategies allow such process.In addition, the field of tissue engineering also requires novel strategies for the design of hydrogel scaffolds that can be applied to repair and heal soft tissues. Emulsions and organogels are attractive materials for such applications, as they enable the control of nano- to micro-structure, in addition to mechanics and viscoelastic properties, but require the engineering of novel scafold proteins enabling the control of interacial as well as bulk rheological properties.This project will exploit supramolecular interactions to assemble and formulate food products and organogel scaffolds for tissue engineering. Protein-based starting materials allowing such design have not been engineered yet. This project will investigate multi-scale assembly processes regulating the bulk rheological and mechanical properties of emulsions and organo-gels. Three major gaps in knowledge will be addressed: (a) the ability to control the phase transition and gellation of organo-hydrocolloids; (b) the ability to regulate the nano-to-macroscale mechanical properties of resulting organo-gels; and (c) the ability to replicate the multiscale complex architecture of natural meat-based foods. Our approach will consists in initially evaluating different types of supramolecular assemblies, based on short peptide moieties, prior to engineering recombinant scaffold proteins with relevant target peptides identified. These insights will establish a set of rules guiding the rational design of hierarchical protein-based organogel food biomaterials.The advances that will be enabled by this project will open new avenues for the discovery of high functionality ingredients (e.g. enzymes and binding partners for supramolecular coupling) and structuring proteins that will be at the core of molecular assembly processes. The industry partner will embed these components within industrially viable formulations, through the use of synthetic biology approaches, with the goal of boosting sensory experience and potentially improve the nutritional profile of sustainable plant-based foods. For example, commercial viability of these strategies could be expanded, by moving expression to plant-based systems such as rice or other seeds.Through the design of novel strategies for the processing of food products, based on organogels, this project will address the BBSRC strategic priority in Food, Nutrition and Health. In addition, through the design of recombinant proteins underlying the self-assembly and control of rheological properties of organogels, it will address the priority on Synthetic Biology. The close collaboration with industry will enable translation of systems developed and address the priority on New Strategic Approaches to Industrial Biotechnology. Finally, organogels designed may find application in other fields, such as tissue engineering, aligned with the priority on Healthy Ageing Across the Lifecourse