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Building a diversified food supply system

Since the "14th Five-Year Plan," China has explicitly articulated goals to "establish a comprehensive food concept" and "develop future food manufacturing." These objectives aim to foster the growth of strategic emerging industries, including synthetic biology, and to cultivate new engines for economic growth.

By leveraging synthetic biology to construct cell factories adaptable to industrial food production, we can efficiently convert renewable raw materials into critical food ingredients, functional food additives, and nutritional chemicals. This approach represents a vital pathway for addressing the multifaceted challenges facing the food industry.

1. Exploring the Diversity of Novel Food Resources

The production of cultivated meat and dairy products through animal cell culture offers a promising complement to traditional animal husbandry. This not only promotes environmental sustainability and reduces agricultural carbon emissions but also opens new avenues for global food supply.

Researchers have genetically engineered plants to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). These modified plants can yield 11 known HMOs, potentially leading to more nutritious and affordable infant formulas in the future.

By using rice as a scaffold for cultivated beef, researchers have grown beef muscle and fat cells directly on rice grains, creating an edible, "nutty-flavored" rice-beef hybrid. This innovation not only enhances the nutritional value of rice, increasing its protein and fat content beyond that of ordinary rice, but also reduces the demand for farmed beef, thereby alleviating environmental pressure.

A technological system has been established for serum-free directed differentiation of porcine embryonic pluripotent stem cells into muscle cells. Combined with animal-component-free 3D scaffolds, this marks the first successful preparation of cultivated meat derived from porcine embryonic pluripotent stem cells.

Novel protein sources, based on cyanobacteria, have been developed that possess textures and tastes similar to real meat, offering a new, green, and sustainable method for plant-based alternative meat production.

Furthermore, new lipid sources, such as plant vegetative tissues and oleaginous microorganisms, provide novel avenues to supplement traditional animal and plant fats. Researchers are employing metabolic engineering and other techniques to improve lipid production in plants and microorganisms, aiming to yield more high-value food-grade oils.

2. Advancing Precision Nutrition and Personalized Food Manufacturing

With advancements in genetic engineering and microbial synthesis technologies, it is now possible to custom-produce specific functional food ingredients. This also supports the development of personalized foods, tailored to an individual's genomic and metabolic profile, to improve health outcomes and reduce disease risks.

For instance, synthetic biology has already enabled the production of functional ingredients. Researchers, using metabolic engineering and dynamic regulation, have developed a highly efficient γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthesis pathway in Corynebacterium glutamicum, utilizing glycerol as a low-cost raw material. The engineered strain ultimately achieved GABA yields exceeding 45 g/L, providing a new tool for the efficient manufacturing of food nutritional molecules.

Breakthroughs have also been made in the microbial synthesis of rare natural pigments. One research team engineered E. coli using tryptophan as a raw material to produce Tyrian purple indigo dye.

Moreover, advancements in synthetic biology make it possible to synthesize flavors and colors through engineered microorganisms.

Researchers have developed ChemSweet, an AI-based rapid screening platform for sweeteners. By integrating various models, this platform can conduct comprehensive, multi-dimensional evaluations of candidate sweeteners across their entire lifecycle, predicting the biosafety and stability of candidate molecules during processing. This provides the food industry with a more precise and efficient screening tool.