Imagine a tiny biological factory that eats CO2 and hydrogen to make milk proteins. Instead of raising cows on vast amounts of land, this system uses specialized bacteria to grow the same proteins in a tank. It's like brewing beer, but the end result is a sustainable dairy ingredient that doesn't need a farm.
Traditional milk production causes high greenhouse gas emissions and requires extensive land. Current microbial alternatives often rely on expensive glucose feedstocks that compete with human food sources.
An engineered hydrogen oxidizing bacterium (Xanthobacter sp. SoF1) and a protein secretion system. This includes predictive metabolic models and a high-throughput screening system for iterative optimization.
If you are a food-tech company dealing with high feedstock costs for glucose—this project developed an engineered hydrogen oxidizing bacterium (eHOB) that uses CO2 instead. This allows you to produce beta-lactoglobulin without competing with human nutrition for sugar sources.
If you are a drug developer dealing with expensive protein synthesis—this project developed a bacterial protein secretion system. This platform can be adapted to deliver proteins for therapeutics to improve human and animal health.
If you are a chemical plant dealing with carbon emissions—this project developed a way to valorize CO2 into high-value proteins and chemicals. This transforms a waste gas into a sellable raw material for materials or fuels.
Based on available project data, specific cost figures are not provided, but the system reduces costs by eliminating the need for expensive glucose feedstocks.
The project includes a specific validation and scale-up phase to optimize the production of secreted proteins for industrial use.
Based on available project data, the project is developing the first-of-a-kind engineered bacterium, but specific licensing terms are not listed.
The main objective is to demonstrate a system where CO2 is valorized into food-grade protein, specifically targeting beta-lactoglobulin.
The project period runs from 2023-09-01 to 2028-02-29, indicating a development cycle of nearly 5 years.
The consortium is lean and research-heavy, consisting of 6 partners across 5 countries. With 4 universities and 2 SMEs, the industry ratio is 33%, suggesting a strong focus on fundamental genetic engineering and metabolic modeling led by the coordinator, Solar Foods Oyj, to bridge the gap between lab research and industrial application.
Contact Solar Foods Oyj in Finland for partnership opportunities regarding eHOB platforms.
Contact us to track the scale-up milestones of the HYDROCOW platform.
