A cell-free approach to prototyping food enzymes

Project dates: 01/01/2023 - 20/12/2023

Food enzyme additives reached a market value of 2.3B USD in 2021, and are forecast to grow rapidly. This project aims to interface an existing CAB synthetic biology technology (LTE cell-free protein expression system) to prototyping enzymes for stabilising or enhancing compounds responsible for antioxidant activity in avocado or chilli extracts. The LTE system has been previously optimised for very small scale protein production to detect protein-protein reactions, or making tiny amounts of high value and difficult to manufacture proteins. To facilitate this new use of LTE, we will take advantage of two recent developments in the system: priming of protein production via linear DNA input, and use of bilayers to increase the system yield thus making it more suitable for rapid production and prototyping of enzymes.

This project will also build on other current applications of the LTE system to metabolic network prototyping via the Synthetic Biology CoE. These funds were awarded in 2023.

Project team

 

 

Project funding