Yeast factories now brew a rainforest fruit's natural sweetener
Shao Q, Xiang Y, Sun Y, Hui T, Wang Y
Crop Improvement
The intensely sweet thaumatin protein comes from the katemfe plant, a West African rainforest shrub most gardeners will never grow or even see, so this lab shortcut could bring its sugar-free sweetness to food shelves without touching wild habitat.
Thaumatin is a protein from an African rainforest plant that tastes incredibly sweet but has almost no calories. Getting enough of it used to mean harvesting fruit from that one plant, which only grows in certain seasons and places. Researchers found a way to get yeast cells to manufacture the exact same protein, fold it correctly, and snip it into its natural sweet-tasting shape, opening a path to make this natural sweetener at scale without depending on the original plant.
Key Findings
Engineered Pichia pastoris yeast produced 126 mg of thaumatin precursor protein per liter of fermentation broth
A specific enzyme cleaved the precursor with nearly 100% conversion efficiency to yield mature, tag-free thaumatin
Circular dichroism spectroscopy confirmed the lab-made protein's secondary structure matches native thaumatin, and taste tests confirmed it is sweet
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists engineered yeast cells to produce thaumatin, an intensely sweet protein normally extracted from a West African fruit, using fermentation instead of farming. The process yields a pure, natural-tasting version that could offer a plant-based, low-calorie sugar alternative without relying on limited crop harvests.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
[High-purity production of native-conformation sweet protein thaumatin via cell factory fermentation and specific enzymatic cleavage].
Thaumatin is a natural sweet-tasting protein derived from the plant Thaumatococcus daniellii, renowned for its high sweetness intensity, low caloric value, and favorable thermal and pH stability. A...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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