Single Cell Protein

With the population growth, water shortage in some regions and climate change, we are facing the challenge of how to feed nine to ten billion people by 2050. Traditional agriculture will not be able to provide enough food for everyone at this point. To solve this problem, several different ways are being considered and researched around the world, focusing especially on meat/protein alternatives. Beside plant-based meat substitutes; culture meat, proteins from insects and fermentation products using different microorganisms are extensively studied/ explored.

Single Cell Protein offers an alternative way for producing edible proteins using less land and less water, and thus contributing also to reducing factors of climate change. Moreover, it is not dependent on seasonal factors and can be produced throughout the whole year.

The Single Cell Protein is a microbial protein produced for food or feed in the form of a dried microbial cell or protein extracted from a microbial cell culture. Algae, fungi, yeasts and bacteria are being considered as microbial production platforms from which products such as dietary supplements (algae), baking ingredients (yeast), meat alternatives (fungi) as well as dairy substitutes and probiotics (bacteria) can be created for the food industry.

In our group “Single Cell Protein”, we focus on the use of new bacterial strains isolated from the environment that can grow on CO₂ as the main or only carbon source. Alternatively, the liquid and solid wastes from industrial and agricultural production chains can be used as feedstock for the microorganisms. This approach aims to create closed production loops for various industries, especially those that produce large volumes of waste streams.

The successful production of a Single Cell Protein requires an establishment of a several steps process: strain isolation and characterization, fermentation, removal of nucleic acid and other undesired substances as polyhydroxyalkanoates or lipoproteins, and protein purification.

 

Our services include:

 

• Isolation and characterization of new microbial strains from environment
• Optimization of media for enhanced bacterial growth, and production of microbial biomass and protein with improved nutritional quality
• Process optimization under knallgass, microaerophilic or anaerobic conditions
• Downstream processing for isolation of proteins for food and feed applications

Please do not hesitate to contact us with your enquiries. We are open for new projects and collaborations with academia and industry.