Paving the way for microbial caseins - deciphering the importance of post-translational modifications - DECIPHER

In order to increase available food for the growing world population and at the
same time reducing climate impact of its production, more sustainable sources of
food proteins are urgently needed. In this context microbial production systems
are promising solutions. However, animal-derived proteins often carry protein
decorations and modifications that gives the proteins special properties and
functionalities. These modifications, scientifically denoted post-translational
modifications (PTMs), are overall linked to more advanced biological systems, and therefore microbes, and especially bacteria, are less capable of
producing. This constitutes a major bottleneck for using microorganisms as the
efficient expression vehicles they actually are for eg the very valuable animal
coded proteins. However, if we can decipher and rank the importance of PTMs
including essential sites and amount or degree of modification at each of these
sites are essential for protein functionality we can reduce the complexity of this
task.
The DECIPHER project initiative aims to remove these bottlenecks associated
with microbial production of proteins related to the milk system – the caseins –
and investigate and hopefully demonstrate the possibility of modifying the bovine
caseins in vitro after their microbial synthesis, and produce protein food
ingredients with comparable nutritional and functional properties as their native,
true animally produced original counterparts.