Pork proteins produced in soy? Molecular farming tech produces pig-plant protein hybrid soybean
Moolec Science SA is producing animal proteins in plants, thanks to molecular farming technology.
The Luxembourg-headquartered ingredients company recently announced an achievement in its Meat Replacement Program: a soybean platform capable of producing a ‘significantly’ high amount of pork protein.
The soybean platform has since been renamed ‘Piggy Sooy’, a technology Moolec CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini said represents tangible and visual proof that Moolec’s technology has the capacity to achieve significant yields in plants to produce meat proteins.
“With this ground-breaking achievement, Moolec consolidates its position as a category creator and a pioneer in Molecular Farming for the food industry. Our plant biology team is writing the history of science in food, I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
What is molecular farming?
Molecular farming describes the production of biomolecules and commercial products using plants, rather than bioreactors and fermentation.
The technology has traditionally been used by the pharmaceutical industry, but in recent years entrepreneurs have begun to investigate its use in industrial biotechnology to produce proteins and enzymes for the food industry.
In Israel, PoLoPo is leveraging molecular farming technology to express egg protein in potato, and Pigmentum is producing dairy proteins in lettuce.
Moolec Science was founded by CEO Paladini, CPO Henk Hoogenkamp, and CTO Martín Salinas with the aim of improving the affordability of animal-free solutions in the food supply chains. Prior to founding Moolec Science, Salinas had a history of applying molecular farming to food ingredients: the CTO led a team that developed a proof of concept enzyme for the cheese market. The functional protein, known as bovine chymosin, was produced in the safflower plant.
As Moolec Science, the company is now producing several meat proteins in plants as functional ingredients that aim to improve the taste, appearance, texture, and nutrition of meat alternatives. One of these is pork protein.
Piggy Sooy
The Piggy Sooy platform enables a pork protein expression level of 26.6% of total soluble protein in soy seeds, which is four times higher than initially projected by Moolec Science. The high level of pork protein within the soybeans even gives them a pink colour.
“Piggy Sooy represents tangible and visual proof that Moolec’s technology has the capacity to achieve significant yields in plants to produce meat proteins,” commented CEO Paladini.
Moolec has filed a patent to protect this production method, which the aim of ensuring a ‘frictionless’ regulatory pathway going forward. The company believes this ‘significant milestone’ consolidates molecular farming as ‘one of the most valuable’ alternative technologies to produce animal protein, given that plants can function as animal protein factories in a more efficient manner than initially expected.
“This achievement opens up a precedent for the entire scientific community that is looking to achieve high levels of protein expression in seeds via molecular farming,” said CSO Amit Dhingra.
“Moolec has developed a unique, successful, and patentable platform for the expression of highly valuable proteins in the seeds of economically important crops such as soybeans.
“This platform has the potential to be used across a wide variety of proteins of interest for a broad range of industries, such as pharma, cosmetic, diagnostic reagents, and other food industries.”
