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Cultivated, Cell-Cultured & Biotechnology

10 Molecular Farming Startups Transforming Everyday Plants into Protein Powerhouses

Today, we bring you a roundup of molecular farming startups transforming plants into biofactories to produce alternatives to animal proteins, pigments, next-gen sweeteners, and growth factors. Plant molecular farming, an additional production approach to plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation, promises unlimited and cost-effective ingredients for food and other industries. Since it doesn’t require expensive infrastructure and bioreactors — only the magic of plants and bioengineering —  existing greenhouses and fields can become ingredient factories, ensuring a straightforward industrial scale-up and competitive prices. Each of the following startups has chosen a plant as its production facility: 1. VelozBio, Mexico: Discarded  fruits VelozBio, a startup based in Monterrey founded in 2020,  claims to have developed the world’s fastest protein design and development platform. VelozBio produces high-value proteins, including casein, by expressing target …

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Investments & Finance

Elo Life Systems Closes $24.5M in Series A for Zero-Calorie Sweetener Made from Watermelons

Ingredients company Elo Life Systems announces the completion of its Series A financing round, which raised a total of $24.5M. The funding will enable the company to accelerate development of its fruit-derived sweeteners by advancing US regulatory approvals, building pilot-scale processing capabilities, and begin market-testing its sweetener with consumers.  Described as a next-generation ingredients company, Elo uses molecular farming (similar to precision fermentation) to produce commercially valuable ingredients that are traditionally difficult to source and extract. Through its processes, Elo says it can make these ingredients more readily available, sustainable and affordable. One of its first innovations, a plant-based sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar with no calories, has the potential to become more popular than Stevia, Elo states, and can be used …

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