全球粮食系统面临着可持续生产足够粮食的挑战,尤其是蛋白质,以满足不断增长的全球人口的需求。在发达国家,大约2/3的蛋白质来自动物来源,1/3来自植物。出于各种各样的原因,饮食建议呼吁这些国家的人口用植物蛋白代替一些动物蛋白。因为很难大幅度改变饮食习惯,增加植物蛋白可能需要创造符合营养的新食物,口感,和消费者欲望的功能属性。与植物性牛奶相比,植物性奶酪尚未被消费者广泛接受。由于植物蛋白无法复制酪蛋白的功能特性,因此现有的植物性奶酪不能令人满意地模仿乳制品奶酪。在奶酪中起着如此关键的作用。目前正在探索克服当前限制的一种可能的解决方案,是生产含有大豆蛋白和大豆来源的酪蛋白的混合产品。利用传统的基因工程工具生产大豆来源的酪蛋白是可能的,如农杆菌介导的植物转化,在大豆中表达产生酪蛋白的基因。如果含有大豆蛋白和大豆来源的酪蛋白的奶酪可以令人满意地模仿乳制品,它提供了增加植物蛋白摄入量的机会,因为美国乳制品奶酪的消费量一直在稳步增长。大豆是生产酪蛋白的绝佳选择,因为大豆广泛可用,在美国和世界食品供应中发挥着重要作用。此外,因为生产酪蛋白的大豆为大豆农民提供了种植增值作物的机会,人们期望它将受到农业界的欢迎。因此,对消费者和农民都有好处。
The global food system faces a challenge of sustainably producing enough food, and especially protein, to meet the needs of a growing global population. In developed countries, approximately 2/3 of protein comes from animal sources and 1/3 from plants. For an assortment of reasons, dietary recommendations call for populations in these countries to replace some of their animal protein with plant protein. Because it is difficult to substantially change dietary habits, increasing plant protein may require the creation of novel foods that meet the nutritional, orosensory, and functional attributes consumers desire. In contrast to plant-based milks, plant-based cheeses have not been widely embraced by consumers. The existing plant-based cheeses do not satisfactorily mimic dairy cheese as plant proteins are unable to replicate the functional properties of casein, which plays such a key role in cheese. One possible solution to overcome current constraints that is currently being explored, is to produce hybrid products containing soy protein and soybean-derived
casein. Producing soybean-derived
casein is possible by utilizing traditional genetic engineering tools, like Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation, to express genes in soybeans that produce
casein. If a cheese containing soy protein and soybean-derived
casein satisfactorily mimics dairy, it presents an opportunity for increasing plant protein intake since US dairy cheese consumption has been steadily increasing. Soybeans are an excellent choice of crop for producing
casein because soybeans are widely available and play a large role in the US and world food supply. Additionally, because a casein-producing soybean offers soybean farmers the opportunity to grow a value-added crop, expectations are that it will be welcomed by the agricultural community. Thus, there are benefits to both the consumer and farmer.