Cellular proteins: a sustainable source of food proteins

The EU has recently reported a protein deficit of more than 20 million tons of protein per year. Besides optimizing protein production from crops and animals, other ways to increase protein yield efficiently and sustainably are also under active exploration. Due to the existence of enormous amount of microorganisms which consist mainly of proteins in the nature, this shows a very promising perspective in the protein production. However, little research has been conducted so far on the functionalities of cellular proteins, which makes it hard to guide their use in the food applications. Therefore, this project aims to gain a thorough understanding on the relationship between structures and functionalities of cellular proteins from common microorganisms, in order to give better suggestions on the targeted protein production and develop functionalized proteins for food applications. In this project, the whole microbial biomass, crude and purified protein fractions will be examined for their structures and functionalities, which will be linked back to the protein production. On top of this, several modifications will be done on structures for exploring the boundary of protein functionalities. In the end, the plant or animal proteins will be mixed with cellular proteins to explore the possibility of protein replacement in food applications.