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Quality Ingredients for the Animal Products Alternatives Industry
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Quality Ingredients for the Animal Products Alternatives Industry

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Quality and Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 October 2025 | Viewed by 1940

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Nurit Argov-Argaman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Animal Science the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Interests: lipids; milk; lactation; metabolism; milk genomics; synthetic biology
Dr. Roni Tadmor-Levi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Animal Science the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Interests: genetics; conservation; complex traits; synthetic biology; milk genomics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the growing demand for sustainable alternatives to animal-based products has propelled the academy and industry to develop replacements for meat, milk, eggs, honey, and other animal-derived commodities. Many of these alternatives still lag behind their originals in terms of taste, texture, nutritional value, and functionality. Cellular agriculture offers advantages in overall product similarity but requires complex and costly systems. Precision fermentation, while relatively cheaper, often produces limited ingredients per microorganism strain (e.g., producing milk proteins like casein without other proteins, sugars, and fats). Moreover, special glycosylation patterns or particle macrostructure formation are required to maintain the original physiological and technological functionalities. These modifications still necessitate animal cells and are not currently mimicked by alternative systems. Nevertheless, precision fermentation can produce specific high-value ingredients, like essential long polyunsaturated fatty acids or complex carbohydrates, which enhance the nutritional value of fats and sugars by guiding consumers’ metabolism, influencing the microbiome, and modulating the immune responses.

Taken together, the sustainable production of functional ingredients for animal-based alternatives will likely require innovative strategies and combining multiple production platforms. Synthetic biology approaches can introduce new features to existing systems, enhancing their capacity to produce high-value ingredients and foods. This Special Issue aims to curate the latest knowledge on producing alternatives to animal-based products. We invite researchers and industry experts to submit their research papers and reviews and to share their insights and advancements in this rapidly evolving field.

Dr. Nurit Argov-Argaman
Dr. Roni Tadmor-Levi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • alternative proteins
  • alternative fats
  • biomimicking
  • fermentation
  • cellular agriculture
  • synthetic biology

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 11740 KiB  
Article
Novel Endo-β-N-Acetylglucosaminidases Derived from Human Fecal Samples Selectively Release N-Glycans from Model Glycoproteins
by Matthew Bolino, Nadini Haththotuwe Gamage, Hatice Duman, Odunayo Abiodun, Amilton S. De Mello, Sercan Karav and Steven A. Frese
Foods 2025, 14(8), 1288; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14081288 - 8 Apr 2025
Viewed by 779
Abstract
Three novel endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidases (AVUL01, BCAC01, and BFIN01) classified as members of the glucoside hydrolase (GH) family 18 were identified from human fecal samples and then cloned and characterized for their ability to hydrolyze two distinct classes of N-glycans. Endo-β-N [...] Read more.
Three novel endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidases (AVUL01, BCAC01, and BFIN01) classified as members of the glucoside hydrolase (GH) family 18 were identified from human fecal samples and then cloned and characterized for their ability to hydrolyze two distinct classes of N-glycans. Endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidases (ENGases) are known for the hydrolysis of chitin and the N,N′-diacetylchitobiose core of N-linked glycans, depending on the glycan architecture. N-glycans have shown bioactivity as substrates in the human gut microbiome for microbes that encode ENGases, thus demonstrating their ecological relevance in the gut. However, distinct types of N-glycan structures, for example, oligomannosidic or complex, have been shown to enrich different microbes within the human gut. Novel advances in food technology have commercialized animal-derived dietary proteins with oligomannosidic instead of traditionally complex N-glycans using precision fermentation. This indicates that there is an unmet need to identify the classes of N-glycans that gut-derived ENGases act upon to determine whether these novel proteins alter gut ecology. AVUL01, BCAC01, and BFIN01 all demonstrated activity on exclusively oligomannosidic N-glycans from RNase B and bovine lactoferrin; however, they failed to show activity on complex or α-1,3-core fucosylated high-mannose N-glycans derived from fetuin and horseradish peroxidase, respectively. These results suggest that α-1,3 core fucosylation and complex N-glycan architecture inhibit the activity of AVUL01, BCAC01, and BFIN01. Furthermore, BFIN01 performed significantly better than BCAC01, resulting in a greater amount of N-glycans, suggesting that certain ENGases may possess enhanced specificity and kinetics as an evolutionary strategy to compete for resources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Quality Ingredients for the Animal Products Alternatives Industry)
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Review

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11 pages, 679 KiB  
Review
How Close Are We to the Production of Milk in Alternative Systems? The Fat Perspective
by Roni Tadmor-Levi and Nurit Argov-Argaman
Foods 2025, 14(5), 809; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14050809 - 26 Feb 2025
Viewed by 864
Abstract
The growing demand for sustainable food systems has led to significant advancements in developing alternatives to animal-derived products. Dairy products are an important dietary source of proteins and fats; however, their production raises environmental concerns, including greenhouse gas emissions, extensive land and water [...] Read more.
The growing demand for sustainable food systems has led to significant advancements in developing alternatives to animal-derived products. Dairy products are an important dietary source of proteins and fats; however, their production raises environmental concerns, including greenhouse gas emissions, extensive land and water usage, and biodiversity loss. Therefore, there is a need to develop sustainable, scalable solutions that will enable the production of quality replacements for animal-based foods with reduced environmental impacts. Recognizing that replacing animal-based products from a single source is currently not feasible; there is a need for high-quality sources of ingredients that can be combined to mimic the holistic product. In recent years, plant-based dairy alternatives have gained traction; however, their inability to replicate the sensorial experience of real milk—attributed largely to the unique composition and structure of milk fat—remains a key limitation. Cow’s milk fat has distinctive characteristics, including a complex fatty acid profile, which is rich in short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids with specific positional distribution. These characteristics of cow’s milk play a role in delivering the aroma, texture, and mouthfeel of dairy products. Recent efforts have focused on leveraging precision fermentation and cellular agriculture to mimic these properties. This review explores the unique lipid composition of ruminant milk, the biosynthesis of milk fats, and the challenges of replicating these features in non-mammalian systems. Emphasis is placed on short-chain fatty acids and chain-termination mechanisms in fatty acid synthesis. By integrating insights from diverse biological systems, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex processes related to milk fat synthesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Quality Ingredients for the Animal Products Alternatives Industry)
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