About This Project

Towards reducing manufacturing costs for meat alternatives while increasing their palatability, we aim to produce a panel of ~100 engineered yeast strains with unique flavors. They will be dehydratable and self-replicating to be consumed as standalone foods or as additives to established nutritious substrates. Scientifically, this work will illuminate how only a few taste receptors can activate perception of many different flavors.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Raising animals for food produces ~15% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. We need nutritious meat alternatives with minimal manufacturing, storage, and shipping costs. However, state-of-the-art solutions for low-cost and long-shelf-life meat alternatives lack variety and flavor, and each component has unique manufacturing requirements. Further, many alternative meat products contain water, which adds to their weight and complicates packaging. To improve on bland meat alternatives with complex components while boosting nutritional value, we propose a pipeline for building versatile, palatable yeast-based foods. Yeast can be eaten raw or cooked, and 1.5 tablespoons has 60 calories (0.5 g fat, 30 mg sodium, 3 g fiber, 8 g protein with all essential amino acids).

What is the significance of this project?

We will engineer nutritional yeast – a single-celled, dehydratable food – to incorporate designed proteins on its surface that will activate human taste receptors. When added in combinations, these engineered yeasts will expand the flavor profile of nutrient-dense substrates, evoking feelings linked with eating familiar foods. Our technology will improve the palatability and accessibility of meat alternatives by expanding the flavors and nutrients that can be incorporated in non-meat foods, while decreasing their cost, weight, and complexity. Scientifically, developing a panel of targeted taste receptor-binding proteins will also advance our knowledge of sensory perception and provide molecular tools to interrogate combinatorial receptor activation, which remains poorly understood.

What are the goals of the project?

We will produce a panel of hundreds of engineered yeasts with a variety of flavor profiles. We will first computationally design taste receptor-binding proteins, screen the designed proteins with yeast surface display, and characterize binders using in vitro techniques and receptor activation assays in human cell culture. The pipeline will be grounded in established yeast display methods and is thus easily transferable and adaptable. If our project is fruitful, we will then determine why different yeast strains evoke different taste perceptions. The first set of engineered yeasts can be transitioned to a commercial partner for industrial development as standalone yeast-based foods, or as additives to established food substrates like dried meat or vegetables, rice, tempeh, tofu, or seitan.