Microbial-Sourced Nutritional Supplements for Human and Animal

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Microbial Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2025 | Viewed by 482

Special Issue Editors

School of Chemical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Interests: feed and nutrition; industrial fermentation; gut microbes and dietary fiber; probiotics; biomass utilization
School of Chemical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Interests: solid-state fermentation (SSF); microbial fermentation; organic waste; reactor design; SSF process; feed protein; single-cell protein; compost; bio-energy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nutritional supplements are a broad category of products that contain one or more dietary ingredients (including vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, oligosaccharides, etc.) to bridge nutrient gaps in the diet. Over the last several decades, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of supplement use for humans and animals. As a result, the supplement industry has seen consistent growth. Traditionally, nutritional supplements have been extracted from natural plants. However, the yield is greatly influenced by the seasons. Some nutritional supplements can be produced by organic chemical synthesis, but this often requires harmful solvents and is economically incompetent. Microbes consist of abundant enzymes, which can convert large chemical substrates into simple edible foods with a high nutritive value. In addition, microbes grow fast and do not have to rely on climatic conditions, which can be scaled up readily. Thus, microbial-sourced nutritional supplements, typically involving the use of microbes and/or enzymes, emerge as an interesting and economically viable concept.

Novel tools have been applied to these fields to enhance and accelerate the development of microbial-sourced nutritional supplements. This includes the high-throughput screening and characterization of microbes and enzymes, as well as genetic and metabolic engineering tools. By engineering strains/enzymes, it is possible to construct de novo synthesis pathways for certain nutritional supplements, in vivo or in vitro. Furthermore, the waste biomass or cheap chemicals can be adopted to produce nutritional supplements, improving sustainability and reducing CO2 emissions.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions in the form of original research, reviews, mini-reviews, opinions and methods manuscripts, exploring the use of microbes and/or functional enzymes to produce nutritional supplements, e.g., vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, oligosaccharides. Topics include the following:

  1. Screening microbes that produce nutritional supplements;
  2. Mining and characterizing enzymes involved in nutritional supplements synthesis;
  3. Genetic engineering or metabolic optimization to improve the production yield/efficiency of nutritional supplements.
  4. Biosynthesis of supplements synthesis from waste biomass or cheap chemicals.
  5. Optimizing the fermentation process to reduce the cost and scale up the production of nutritional supplements.

Dr. Zhi Wang
Dr. Yafan Cai
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • microbial-sourced
  • nutritional supplements
  • biosynthesis
  • fermentation
  • enzymes

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2577 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Laboratory Evolution of a Microbial Consortium Enhancing Non-Protein Nitrogen Assimilation for Feed Protein Production
by Yi He, Shilei Wang, Yifan Mi, Mengyu Liu, Huimin Ren, Zhengxiang Guo, Zhen Chen, Yafan Cai, Jingliang Xu, Dong Liu, Chenjie Zhu, Zhi Wang and Hanjie Ying
Microorganisms 2025, 13(6), 1416; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms13061416 - 18 Jun 2025
Viewed by 313
Abstract
The increasing global demand for protein underscores the necessity for sustainable alternatives to soybean-based animal feed, which poses a challenge to human food security. Thus, the search for sustainable, alternative protein sources is transforming the feed industry in its effort to sustainable operations. [...] Read more.
The increasing global demand for protein underscores the necessity for sustainable alternatives to soybean-based animal feed, which poses a challenge to human food security. Thus, the search for sustainable, alternative protein sources is transforming the feed industry in its effort to sustainable operations. In this study, a microbial consortium was subjected to adaptive laboratory evolution using non-protein nitrogen (NPN) and wheat straw as the sole carbon source. The evolved microbial consortium was subsequently utilized to perform solid-state fermentation on wheat straw and NPN to produce feed protein. After 20 generations, the microbial consortium demonstrated tolerance to 5 g/L NPN, including ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, and urea, which represents a fivefold increase compared to the original microbial consortium. Among the three NPNs tested, the evolved microbial consortium exhibited optimal growth performance with ammonium sulfate. Subsequently, the evolved microbial consortium was employed for the solid-state fermentation (SSF) of wheat straw, and the fermentation conditions were optimized. It was found that the true protein content of wheat straw could be increased from 2.74% to 10.42% under specific conditions: ammoniated wheat straw (15% w/w), non-sterilization of the substrate, an inoculation amount of 15% (v/w), nitrogen addition amount of 0.5% (w/w), an initial moisture content of 70%, a fermentation temperature of 30 °C, and a fermentation duration of 10 days. Finally, the SSF process for wheat straw was successfully scaled up from 0.04 to 2.5 kg, resulting in an increased true protein content of 9.84%. This study provides a promising approach for the production of feed protein from straw and NPN through microbial fermentation, addressing protein resource shortages in animal feed and improving the value of waste straw. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbial-Sourced Nutritional Supplements for Human and Animal)
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