The rediscovery of Mendel’s genetic law in 1900 marked the birth of genetics. The establishment of DNA molecular double helix structure model in 1953 marked that the study of life entered the genetic era; In 2000, the genetic element with "logic circuit" was constructed in E.coli cells, and the development of life science entered the era of synthetic biology. A biological revolution spanning a hundred years has led mankind to quickly enter the stage of "creation" from "observation and description".
Even though human’s understanding of the nature of life is far from enough, it still can’t resist the engineering process of life science. Synthetic biology provides a new quantitative, computable and predictable methodology for life science research and a new biological solution for major problems in the development of human society. As a bio-manufacturing production mode, with the development of technology, synthetic biology has covered many industries such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, chemical production, innovative energy, new materials, food, agriculture and so on.
Since the beginning of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, China has clearly put forward "establishing a big food concept", "constructing a diversified food supply system" and "developing future food manufacturing" to promote the development of strategic emerging industries including biotechnology and build a new growth engine.
The concept of "big food" expanded the traditional food boundary, and "new food" came into being.The key driving force of "new food" is to change from cultivated land resources to all-round and multi-channel development of food resources, to demand heat and protein from plants, animals and microorganisms, to innovate protein sources, food raw materials and food industry ingredients, to develop cell factories for food production, to empower the food industry by scientific and technological means, to expand food boundaries, and to introduce more production scenarios into the food field by using new technologies.
Taking synthetic biology as the source of technological innovation, transforming theoretical research into an all-round industry of actual products, production processes and system services, and creating new production modes and economic forms, DeepTech officially released the report "Research on the Application and Prospect of Synthetic Biology in Food Microbiology Manufacturing in 2023"-exploring the future prospects with the typical application of synthetic biotechnology in new foods.
This report selects typical scenarios of synthetic biotechnology application in new foods, focusing on the innovation of substitute proteins, food additives and food raw materials; At the same time, microalgae, as a new plant-based food, can also be used as the chassis cells of synthetic organisms. This report will also pay attention to its application and development potential.
New food driven by technology: synthetic biology has become the key technology to promote the development of new food.
Synthetic biology empowers food research and development, establishes new methods for large-scale food production, develops multifunctional substitute proteins, synthesizes natural rare products, provides microbial oils, produces food additives and food raw materials, develops food products with controllable flavor, texture and shape, and realizes safer, more nutritious and more sustainable food acquisition methods.
Figure | Application of synthetic biological cell factory in food field (source: open information, DeepTech)
Food has become an important growth pole of the global synthetic biological market. In recent years, enterprises have gradually differentiated from platform-type all-round enterprises to enterprises focusing on a certain vertical field. After gaining a firm foothold in market segments, they began to lay out emerging markets with more technological advantages and product barriers. The second half of the competition of synthetic organisms in the food field will test the product delivery ability, refined operation ability and product profitability.
Figure | Course of Synthetic Biology from R&D to Industrialization (Source: DeepTech)
According to the industry consensus and institutional prediction, the biotechnology revolution will focus on the application of CRISPR technology, microbiome and protein technology in the food field; Revolutionary ability lies in cell construction, high-precision control, improvement of cell transformation ability, Qualcomm research and development means, etc.
Figure | Prediction of Acceleration Point of Synthetic Biology Technology in Food Applications (Source: McKinsey, DeepTech)
Synthetic organisms have innovative directions that need to be broken through in all aspects of the new food value chain: establishing research and development barriers, improving the capacity of component databases, accumulating experience in chassis development, and thinking about cell transformation in combination with the difficulty of industrialization; Improve the scale-up production capacity, precipitate the scale-up experience, accumulate relevant data, pay attention to the optimization of fermentation yield, and develop intelligent equipment to assist production.
Global policy environment for new food: approval and supervision are still strict, and strategic deployment and policy support are obvious.
United States of AmericaAs a pioneer of synthetic biotechnology, it has the most active market and technical atmosphere, and is the largest regional market of synthetic biology in the world. The relatively loose policy supervision level has consolidated this leading position;BritainPay attention to the development of synthetic biology early, and the discipline infrastructure is at the international leading level;EUThe development route of synthetic biology was first drawn up to promote its development of European circular bio-economy.
Figure | Policy of Synthetic Bio-industry in Other Countries in the World (Source: Open Information, DeepTech)
China’s approval and supervision of new foods are still strict, and its strategic deployment and policy support are obvious.In 2020, we will support the construction of a synthetic biological innovation center. In 2022, we will propose "exploring new foods, realizing iterative upgrading of food industrialization, and reducing the pressure on traditional farming environment and resources". In 2022, we will openly solicit opinions on food nutrition fortifiers from genetically modified sources. It shows a favorable policy trend for new foods dominated by synthetic biotechnology.
Figure | China New Food Industry Policy (Source: Open Information, DeepTech)
Substitute protein in typical scene: an important symbol of future food
Taking microorganism as the carrier of biological manufacturing will show strong power in artificial milk, microbial cell protein, nutritional supplements, flavor substances and so on in the future. Substitute protein products often have high added value, small market demand and high requirements for product purity.
High value-added protein:Milk protein, egg protein and heme protein are the main representatives. The research of artificial milk and artificial egg is in the initial stage of production process breakthrough and product commercialization, and breaking through its key biosynthesis technology has become a key factor in market competition.
Microbial protein:As a large-scale protein replacement product, most of them are mainly fungal proteins, but the current market acceptance is low. The products are in the form of quality improvement and protein supplement raw material supply in the short term.
Another driving force for the production of substitute proteins by synthetic organisms is environmental friendliness. First, the utilization efficiency of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients by microorganisms is significantly higher than that of plants, which reduces the impact of nitrogen and phosphorus loss on the environment under artificial fertilization. Secondly, microbial fermentation significantly reduces the dependence on land and water, does not directly compete with food crops for soil and fresh water resources, and can be used for large-scale and intensive production. Thirdly, traditional livestock feeding is the main source of greenhouse gas methane emission. From the perspective of energy conversion, the carbon emission can be reduced by more than 80% compared with traditional meat.
Food Addition in Typical Scenarios: Boundary Expansion of Food Industry
There are many traditional giants in this field, and there are mature supply chains and industrial ecology. The opportunity to synthesize biotechnology lies in high value-added raw materials, which are suitable for small batch production, and the market scale is also rising rapidly, such as new sweeteners, nutritional fortifiers and functional raw materials.
Biosynthesis of natural products:At present, most natural food products supplied to the market are extracted from plants, and a small number of products are chemically synthesized. The indicators of cost, complexity and environmental friendliness are not good, and there are huge opportunities for biosynthesis, such as psicose, sweet protein and carotenoids. Driven by the strong demand for reducing sugar, the market scale of new sweeteners is constantly expanding. Developing rare components of sweeteners and transforming degradable sweeteners by synthetic biotechnology can form a big technical barrier.
Innovating functional food raw materials;The proportion of health consumption in the total consumption expenditure is increasing year by year. Some new food raw materials or health care ingredients, because of their functional properties, gradually come into consumers’ field of vision, which makes foods containing these raw materials more likely to attract attention. The representative ingredients are breast milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), ergothionine and hyaluronic acid. At present, the biosynthesis of HMOs has been initially able to produce, and Escherichia coli, yeast, lactic acid bacteria and Bacillus can be used as production strains, but at present, the diversity of HMOs in natural breast milk can not be simulated in industry, which has broad industrial prospects.
Microalgae in typical scenes: a new plant-based food with great potential
Microalgae, as a good substitute for protein, has the characteristics of rich content, comprehensive amino acid composition and high nutritional value, and can be used for the development of food, nutritional supplements or health food. As one of the synthetic biological chassis cells, the production of high-value additives or nutritional supplements (such as carotenoids and polyunsaturated fatty acids) has become a hot spot.
Transformation of microalgae chassis cells and product development;Efficient and stable genetic transformation system is the bottleneck problem that restricts microalgae biosynthesis at present. Developing a Qualcomm transformation and detection system suitable for microalgae and improving the construction efficiency of microalgae chassis cells is the key to the driving force of microalgae industry, including growth transformation, heterotrophic culture transformation and target product yield improvement.
Development of microalgae based on the concept of "double carbon";More and more attention has been paid to the conversion of carbon dioxide into biomass raw materials by microalgae, but it should be noted that the large-scale industrial biological fixation of carbon dioxide by microalgae is still in the immature primary development stage, and the future carbon fixation by microalgae will change from "agricultural model" to "industrial model".
Present situation of new food industry driven by synthetic organisms
The value of any technology-driven industry is obviously concentrated in R&D and innovation. Establish R&D barriers upstream, such as establishing chassis cell bank, component bank, Qualcomm screening platform and rapid chassis cell development capability; The downstream combines the vertical industrial chain, broadens the product layout, enhances universality, enhances mass production capacity, and precipitates amplification experience.
As a mass-oriented consumer product, food is bound to enter the stage of industrialization, providing competitive products to the market, and the transformation of results needs to open the way from research and development to mass production. At present, China has become one of the most active markets for synthetic biology in the world, and a number of enterprises with industrialization capability have been forging ahead on the road of innovation, and Guochuang Biology is one of the representative enterprises.
Founded in 2021, Guochuang Bio has obtained financing of over 100 million US dollars within 10 months, and is a new force in global synthetic biology. Build the engineering bacteria bank and the underlying technology of Qualcomm screening, and use the technology platform to improve the mass production and universality.
The products are distributed in the fields of food and beverage, beauty cosmetics, household cleaning and other consumer goods, and involve medical care, agriculture and bulk materials. In 2022, there are a variety of small molecular peptides, erythritol and other products, and more than 30 substances are on sale. The annual output of the factory has exceeded 10,000 tons. There are 50 kinds of substances in the warehouse, among which protein products in the warehouse include milk powder protein, sweet protein, vegetable protein, collagen, elastin and so on. In addition, there are more than 10 kinds of substances such as peptides, vitamins and sugars, such as erythritol, gellan gum, squalene and various enzyme preparations.
The cell factory constructed by synthetic biology can improve production efficiency, product safety and regulation accuracy.Compared with the traditional extraction technology, the biological fermentation method of state-created organisms has the characteristics of controllable conditions, simple product components and simple purification.
Figure | Enterprises related to new food industry innovation (part) (Source: DeepTech)
At present, China has shown a favorable policy trend towards new foods dominated by synthetic biotechnology, which will help the bio-economic industry to quickly become a new growth engine.
Looking forward to the next 1-3 years, technology-driven new foods as mass consumer goods will surely move towards scale and industrialization. Fully foreseeing and solving problems in the R&D stage and arranging downstream fermentation projects and purification processes in advance will help the success of industrialization. The following points can be the strategic direction and capacity-building direction that enterprises in the industry focus on.
R&D capacity expansion:Any technology or product that moves from laboratory to industrialization will go through the gap between R&D and industrialization. Enterprises should have a solid reserve of technology and products, and think about the growth of industrial demand and volume in advance, so as to be expected to succeed in multi-track.
Pay attention to industrial scale:Industrial scale is an important index to consider marginal cost, and the relationship between production cost and equipment size is exponentially decreasing, with the traditional brewing coefficient of 0.6 and the precision fermentation coefficient of 0.7-0.8. Pay attention to industrial scale and further reduce production cost.
Matching downstream technologies:Different cell growth characteristics and fermentation processes are completely different, so it is impossible to apply a unified and simple model. It is necessary to fully consider the production capacity at the initial stage of cell factory design, and at the same time develop more efficient and lower-cost downstream processes.
"Starting from the end" lays out the product track according to the market.Choose products with high added value, high technical barriers, environmental friendliness and more suitable for biotechnology research and development; Using chassis cells suitable for industrial production, building a cell factory with strong anti-interference ability and fully considering large-scale production during the research and development period will help to improve the efficiency and success rate from laboratory to industrialization.
* The above analysis is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.
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