Moolec Science SA, a Luxembourg-based ingredients company, has made significant advancements in its Meat Replacement Program by utilizing molecular farming technology to produce animal proteins from plants. With their latest achievement, Moolec has successfully developed a soybean platform, now known as “Piggy Sooy,” capable of producing a remarkable quantity of pork protein. This breakthrough serves as concrete evidence that Moolec’s technology can achieve substantial plant-based yields in the production of meat proteins. Moolec CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini expressed pride in the company’s groundbreaking achievement and hailed their plant biology team as history-makers in the food science field.
Molecular farming entails the production of biomolecules and commercial products utilizing plants rather than bioreactors and fermentation. Although traditionally employed by the pharmaceutical industry, entrepreneurs have begun exploring its application in industrial biotechnology for the production of proteins and enzymes in the food industry. Examples of this include PoLoPo, an Israeli start-up leveraging molecular farming to express egg protein in potatoes, and Pigmentum, which produces dairy proteins in lettuce.
Moolec Science was founded by Paladini, CPO Henk Hoogenkamp, and CTO Martín Salinas with the goal of enhancing the affordability of animal-free solutions in the food supply chain. Prior to creating Moolec Science, Salinas already had experience applying molecular farming to food ingredients. As the CTO, he led a team that developed a proof of concept enzyme called bovine chymosin, produced in the safflower plant for the cheese market. Under Moolec Science, the company now produces various meat proteins as functional ingredients intended to enhance the taste, appearance, texture, and nutritional value of meat alternatives, including pork protein.
The Piggy Sooy platform has achieved a pork protein expression level of 26.6% of total soluble protein in soy seeds, surpassing Moolec Science’s initial projections by four times. The high concentration of pork protein within the soybeans even gives them a distinctive pink color. Moolec has filed a patent to protect this production method, ensuring a smooth regulatory pathway moving forward. The company believes that this significant milestone solidifies molecular farming as one of the most valuable alternative technologies for animal protein production, as plants can serve as efficient protein factories beyond expectations.
“This accomplishment serves as a precedent for the scientific community seeking to achieve high levels of protein expression in seeds through molecular farming,” commented CSO Amit Dhingra. He further emphasized that Moolec has developed a unique, successful, and patentable platform for expressing highly valuable proteins in economically important crop seeds like soybeans. This versatile platform holds potential for various industries, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, diagnostic reagents, and other food sectors.
In summary, Moolec Science’s deployment of molecular farming technology to produce animal proteins from plants has proven to be a game-changer. The development of the Piggy Sooy platform, with its exceptional production capabilities and patentable methods, opens up new possibilities and contributes to the continuous evolution of the food and beverage industry. With increased sustainability, enhanced regulations, innovative packaging, and consumer-centric trends, the food and beverage sector is undergoing a transformative phase driven by groundbreaking technologies like molecular farming.
