Engineered Recombinant Strategies to Organogel Design for Food Product Formulations

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