Maya Sapir-Mir is CEO and co-founder of PoLoPo, a molecular farming pioneer producing proteins directly in common crops, beginning with egg protein (ovalbumin) grown in potatoes.
PoLoPo last year raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding and recently unveiled its molecular farming platform, SuperAA, for producing key proteins ovalbumin and patatin.
Maya has nearly ten years of experience in the biotech industry and agricultural R&D and holds a PhD in plant sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She performed post-doctoral work at the Volcani Institute, Israel’s leading agricultural R&D facility, in protein identification, extraction, and characterization in plants and microorganisms.
Here, she explains the importance of this emerging biotechnology; “Instead of inefficiently growing plants to feed animals crowded in factory farms, molecular farming gives us plants that are far more efficient protein factories”.
Molecular farming: animal protein from plants for a more sustainable food future
By Maya Sapir-Mir, PhD
Molecular farming is an innovative field of biotechnology that uses plants as living factories to produce metabolites such as proteins, pigments, sugars, fatty acids, and more.
As the food and beverage (F&B) industry looks for new, sustainable ways to produce food, molecular farming offers unique and exciting opportunities. Current leaders include Nobell Foods (USA), Moolec Science (UK), BioBetter (Israel), and our company PoLoPo (Israel).
Molecular farming combines the advantages of its two separate components: the growth potential inherent in plants, plus the scientific possibility of synthetic biology. Even startups have a feasible, resource-efficient way to scale production: just plant another field!
Plus, molecular farming is highly complementary to the current food industry, which is already built based on food processing lines that turn crops into ingredients. Molecular farming startups can utilize those lines for their needs, rely on a well-established infrastructure, and help food companies produce higher-value and more sustainable products.
“…molecular farming is highly complementary to the current food industry, which is already built based on food processing lines that turn crops into ingredients”
For example, when we set out to use metabolic engineering to produce animal proteins in common plant crops, we chose the remarkably versatile, low-cost/high-yield potato. Potato plants are resilient in diverse climates and thus grow nearly anywhere in the world, reach maturity quickly, and offer a large storage capacity in the form of tubers. Equally important: there is a well-established infrastructure of harvesting and processing technology that turns potatoes into foods we love. (Seriously, what can’t potatoes do??)
Our cutting-edge science turns the humble potato plant into a micro-biofactory that manufactures animal proteins that are stored in the tuber. Tubers are harvested when they grow large enough, and their proteins are extracted and dried into powder. Those powders can seamlessly integrate into existing food processing lines and formulations. The proteins are chemically identical, with the same functionality, taste, and nutritional value.
Our first success is developing ovalbumin — egg protein — in potatoes. Egg protein is used worldwide for functional reasons like texture and stability, for extending the shelf life of packaged foods, and for nutritional value. It’s an enormous market, and is expected to hit $36 billion by 2032. But consumers, as well as F&B companies, have seen “eggflation” as the price of feed has increased, avian influenza has decimated flocks, and supply chains have grown unstable.
Globally, more than 70 percent of agriculture is animal farming, and that includes growing feed crops. Instead of inefficiently growing plants to feed animals crowded in factory farms, molecular farming gives us plants that are far more efficient protein factories.
Not only would it be far more humane, we would slash the environmental impact of animal farming, and reclaim an enormous amount of land.
On the other hand, molecular farming requires patience, as each experiment takes time, the time needed for each plant to grow fully. Like our colleagues in cultivated proteins and precision fermentation, we still face murky regulatory pathways, and allergy concerns need to be resolved: does egg protein grown inside a potato trigger the same allergic reaction as egg protein that comes from a chicken?
While these remain gray areas for now, it is only a matter of time before hurdles to commercialization are cleared.
Further information at https://www.polopo.tech/
