Engineered bacteria pave the way for vegan cheese and yogurt:
Bacteria are set to transform the future of dairy-free milk products. Scientists have successfully engineered E. coli to produce key milk proteins essential for cheese and yogurt production, without using any animal-derived ingredients. This paves the way for plant-based dairy alternatives that mimic traditional dairy at a molecular level but are sustainable and cruelty-free.
A recent study published in Trends in Biotechnology reported two methods for producing casein (a milk protein) that are nutritionally and functionally similar to bovine casein.
Casein is a highly sought-after component in both infant and adult diets, as it is digestible, of high quality, and provides several essential amino acids our body needs. The global casein market, valued at US$2.7 billion in 2023, comes at the cost of animal cruelty and high environmental impact. This rise in demand for sustainable and dairy-free options has led researchers to seek alternative methods of producing casein.
The food and pharmaceutical industries have utilized microorganisms as cell factories for the large-scale production of biomolecules, dietary supplements, and enzymes for quite some time. Scientists were curious to see if the same approach could be used for recombinant casein proteins, produced through genetic engineering in microbial cell factories. However, these techniques often fail to replicate a key factor that imparts casein its unique properties—phosphorylation, a biological process where a phosphate group is added to a protein.
[...] The researchers highlighted that while kinase-mediated phosphorylation provides a route for closely mimicking native casein, phosphomimetic casein provides a simpler path for producing functionally similar proteins. They also suggested that further quantitative analysis is required to fully unlock our ability to harness the microbial production of caseins for sustainable and cruelty-free dairy and food applications.
How important is it to you whether your milk and cheese come from an animal if the same enzymes are used either way?
Journal Reference: Suvasini Balasubramanian et al, Production of phosphorylated and functional αs1-casein in Escherichia coli, Trends in Biotechnology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.05.015
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2025, @03:18PM (7 children)
The dairy lobby will be all over this...if it ever gets anywhere near production. Same as the meat lobby was for plant-based burgers.
On a personal front, I'm a fan of a particular 1 year aged cheddar, made from cows milk that is naturally a little low in fat (the nature of dairy in this area). The chances of reproducing that flavor seem really low, so I'm not expecting any substitutes to appear...and keeping my fingers crossed that local cheese makers will continue to make it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:42PM
so will they add rape seed oil for the fat, or will this taste like the chalk you get from non-fat milk?
(Score: 2) by Undefined on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:43PM
And for actual meat (cultured.) Multiple US states have already made it illegal to "traffic" in cruelty-free meats.
Many useful and improved new technologies face resistance from entrenched interests. This is one of those times. It'll be an uphill battle, but it doesn't seem likely that cultured meat will not become widely available once we get the production and price issues managed.
OTOH, plant-based substitutes aren't actually meat, don't taste like meat, don't have the same nutritional profile as meat, and AFAIAC, are a waste of time, energy and money to pursue. YMMV.
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(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday July 24 2025, @05:14PM (4 children)
And with semi-good reason. Strictly speaking, it may be the same proteins, but it's not "real milk proteins" if it doesn't come out of milk. Depending upon the process, the difference might not be significant, but often times there's other stuff commingled that you have to consider.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sgleysti on Friday July 25 2025, @12:04AM (3 children)
Proteins are proteins.
This is a solvable engineering problem.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday July 26 2025, @12:29AM (2 children)
They are, but they're not milk proteins, they are proteins made in a different fashion that match with what proteins are in milk. There's also potentially religious objections to producing the proteins in such a fashion, or proteins not produced in such a fashion. Those proteins may or may not be permissible to be mixed with meat in some religious interpretations.
The last bit, it is a solvable problem, the more relevant question is whether or not there's going to be adequate care to ensure that any unsafe materials are removed. IF the way things have been done previously is any indication, probably not. At least unless the harm shows up during shorter term testing.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Saturday July 26 2025, @02:04AM (1 child)
It is irrational to make such distinctions about the production process when the end material is the same. Not that that's going to stop people.
Irrational and tedious, I might add.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday July 26 2025, @06:32PM
It may well be, but there's billions of people in the world that think that way. I don't personally agree, but I don't personally have an issue with eating a cheeseburger either. Likewise, I don't know how you label foods using these products in a way that doesn't just muddy the waters so that it's an absolute nightmare for people that are OK with the lab stuff, but not the real stuff.
The best case scenario is probably this stuff being used in products that would still violate the related rules or receive some sort of a different name. But, there again, depending on the protein, there may still be issues like with allergies.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Frosty Piss on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:49PM (7 children)
Bacteria, natural or created in the lab are living things. Strictly speaking, I can't imagine how this could be "Vegan" (or how "Vegans" (or how "Vegans" justify the murder of living plants). Remember the "Vegan" controversy over honey? It's not "Vegan" because after all, we are enslaving the bee.
(Score: 5, Touché) by mcgrew on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:56PM
Indeed, Niel DeGrasse Tyson posited that no matter what you eat, something has to die. But he's an astrophysicist, not a biologist. As his comedic partner pointed out, nothing has to die for you to eat salt. The same goes for honey.
And not only does nothing have to die for you to eat fruit, your eating that fruit is part of that plant's reproductive cycle. You're having sex with a plant. Likewise, only female mosquitoes bite because they need your blood to reproduce. So when a mosquito bites you, it's rape.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 24 2025, @08:24PM
Wait, that's not the reason why it's not "Vegan" is it? I assumed there was some sort of bee something in it, which made it not "Vegan". Like eating cockroaches isn't "Vegan".
[duck duck go intermission]
Woah, that was a rabbit hole. My brain hurts a little more and even, if I eat what I would consider a "Vegan" diet (No Dairy/Eggs/Meat+Fish), I just might not call myself "Vegan". Due to the bizzaro world that is "Vegan". However there are certain things I like too much. Like Cheese and Ice Cream. That said, you can make some extremely tasty "Vegan" (Sorbet + Tofu) Ice Cream. However, typically "Vegan" alternatives are just "more expensive" versions of X thing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sgleysti on Friday July 25 2025, @12:00AM (4 children)
The nervous systems of animals used for meat and dairy are developed enough that we have reason to believe they experience suffering when we utilize them for food.
We don't think the same about plants or bacteria.
Bees, I'm not certain.
The main point is reducing the suffering of sentient creatures.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2025, @01:23AM
I'm pretty sure suffering evolved in very early because it's useful for survival. The existence of suffering is more important than intelligence for most species.
FWIW bees aren't that stupid:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-02-24/smart-bees-learn-how-to-use-tools-by-watching-others/8297576 [abc.net.au]
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/oct/27/bumblebees-playing-wooden-balls-bees-study [theguardian.com]
In fact not all single celled creatures are that stupid either. Some make their own shells, hunt, etc. So I'm pretty sure neurons being specialized cells for thinking are far smarter than less specialized single celled stuff. They're not just dumb components. The "neural network" is like the LLM weights which makes things look smart, but how were the weights decided on in the first place?
(Score: 1, Troll) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 27 2025, @01:28AM (2 children)
We don't eat the bees.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Sunday July 27 2025, @04:50PM (1 child)
YOU don't eat bees. I find them delicious, especially dipped in honey and chocolate.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 27 2025, @09:49PM
Point taken.
I have seen chocolate-covered ants in specialty grocery stores.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:52PM (4 children)
I don't understand veganism, especially not wanting milk or cheese, two foods that nothing has to die for you to eat. Milk, especially, is a mammal's food. Genetics gave mammals the ability to generate it for the young of the various species.
I find it humorous that the vast majority of people I've met have an aversion to human milk, the one food humans were genetically programmed to eat. I discovered after my first child was born that I LOVE human milk. Since tasting it, cow's milk just won't do.
Not being milked is torture for a lactating mammal! Not drinking milk is cruel to that lactating person or animal.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday July 24 2025, @06:40PM (1 child)
Actually, the young of their own species, or more specifically their own young not just fellow species members in general.
It's pretty much a slavery argument.
There's also something weird about humans; no other animal steals another animals milk, or its extremely rare anyway. Also we'll enslave distantly related mammals for their milk but not nearby primates, which is actually kind of surprising.
Its a viable starvation prevention strategy and some cheeses are admittedly pretty tasty but the whole "drink milk" thing takes a LOT of marketing to get people to do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2025, @11:05AM
I would argue that most 'Drink Milk' marketing campaigns fail as the stuff they peddle as milk these days is terrible, cf. the milk we had delivered to the doorstep in glass bottles every morning (bar Sundays) in the 60's and early 70's to the dreck in cartons and plastic containers we have today.
I've been a strict vegetarian for 40 years now¹ (ten years prior to that, vegetarian plus fish) and I'll admit to having being almost vegan for most of them. I don't do 'fake' meat, can't abide tofu and soya so I'm one of those classed as 'weird' even by the vegans of my ken (pot, meet kettle...)
Milk itself I can live without (fake 'undairy' milks are all Abominations Unto Nuggan), but there's no fucking way I'm giving up cheese.
¹ I still cook the meals for the family, meat dishes as well. I will freely admit to still salivating madly when grilling bacon for them. They find it funny that even after it being 50 years since I last ate the stuff, I still react this way to the smell of it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday July 24 2025, @09:59PM
I know, right? Nicely sweet and right off the breasts i love!
Breast of BOTH WORLDS! 8)
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(Score: 3, Informative) by sgleysti on Friday July 25 2025, @12:01AM
Animals in factory farms experience pretty horrid living conditions.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FuzzyTheBear on Thursday July 24 2025, @04:53PM (6 children)
Ever lived on a farm ? The cows are coming in all happy to give out their milk in the morning and evening. Before calling the milk industry " cruel " u think those people need to get onto a farm up here in Canuckia and see how this is done. Noone was ever " cruel " to cows. This is a stupid card to try to play. It's like having an 18 of clubs and getting it out at a poker game. Go home.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday July 24 2025, @05:07PM (5 children)
Be careful with your typos, son, you just slandered Peter Noone. I'm sure you meant "no one".
It isn't the milking that's cruel, it's the cattle's living conditions when they're not being milked. But does anyone expect a corporation that doesn't give a damn about whether a human lives or dies care whether an animal is tortured? My Grandpa fell four stories down an elevator shaft in 1959 because Purina was too God damned cheap to put doors on the elevators at his job site. Thank Eisenhower, Kennedy, and their congresses for OSHA! Because all corporate CEOs are evil. Pity the poor heartless bastards.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 4, Informative) by FuzzyTheBear on Thursday July 24 2025, @07:13PM
In the USA i can't say , i don't live there. Cows here all live " free " Morning they go out in the fields doing what cows do best , munch , lay down , drink and sleep :D Corpos might think / act otherwise but this is NOT the USA. Cows live free and are well cared for. As for noone .. i apologise to all the Noone's Peter on the planet :) Or is that Peter Noone ? Oh well .. I am blessed not to live in the USA and will never step foot over that line ever again. Too well up here. Good luck down there. You truly need a good government that will work for the citizens and not the corporatioins and their generous donations to the politicians. Citizens United really screwed the lot of you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Thursday July 24 2025, @07:22PM (3 children)
Have you ever seen a herd of cows in the wild? I haven't. If it ever becomes unprofitable to keep cows, they'll be slaughtered. They only live because they're useful.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday July 24 2025, @10:31PM (2 children)
Modern dairy cattle could not live in the wild, even without predators. They've been bred to be too specialized. They've been bred so that they can no longer nurse the calves, without suffering mastitis or worse.
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(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Sunday July 27 2025, @05:44AM (1 child)
Feral populations of domesticated breeds do exist in the wild
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday July 27 2025, @01:26PM
But I believe those were beef cattle, not dairy cattle.
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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 24 2025, @06:19PM (1 child)
From what I've seen and heard, dairy cows have pretty good lives. For the bulls of dairy cattle breeds, it varies: great for those deemed good studs, not so thrilling for the rest of the boys. The bulls that aren't wanted for fathering more cows are usually castrated and sent to the slaughterhouse soon as they're grown up.
I think also that whatever cruelty there is should be set against a life in the wild, not against some paradisiacal neverland standard. Further, an advance of this sort can mean a whole lot of cows shall never be. That happened
As to the ecological footprint, oh yes, by all means reduce that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2025, @01:29AM
You reduce the ecological footprint by having most humans living in densely populated cities, and most livestock in densely populated farms.
That way there's more wilderness and less disturbed areas for the wildlife. If 8 billion people were spread out across the 4 billion hectares of forest in the world, there'd be a lot less undisturbed wildlife.
As for efficiency - I suspect it might be hard for machines to be as efficient in terms of "fuel" and space in producing meat and eggs compared to a chicken.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 24 2025, @06:43PM (11 children)
I suspect the people who push this hard will entirely coincidentally also be the "eat the bugs" people and the "we love seed oils" people etc.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday July 24 2025, @07:19PM (5 children)
No doubt about that. I'll refuse to call this milk. Like "Oat Milk", not milk. It's oat and water. All vegan sausages or hot dogs. Bread and mushroom sausages. They love to add something "meat" or dairy related to all their products to hide what they actually are. Why not just call it what it is? The vegans and others love their things. Why call it Vegan Hamburgers when there is no ham in it. Call it what it is -- mushroompaddies. I guess it just won't sell.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 24 2025, @08:30PM (4 children)
There's typically no ham in a hamburger either. They're typically beef patties. Maybe choose a different example next time? However, as someone who is actively looking for the "non-meat" alternatives, it would be great if there was a giant sign that was obnoxiously obvious that, say 'yo, here's the no-meat protein things.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Thursday July 24 2025, @10:04PM
Yes, but the name has nothing to do with ham. It's named after the city of Hamburg.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday July 25 2025, @10:54AM (2 children)
Those must be some dry burgers if you just use 100% beef. I tend to mix in at least some pork (of which Ham is a type). That said yes it was a bad example on my part. Still it was also valid since the vegan people clearly want their non-animal products to taste and feel like the real thing. Which it isn't no matter how much they spice it up.
You don't have that in your store? There is a whole section in the stores I go to for the non-animal-proteins. I usually look at or read them from time to time just to see what is in them and from what I can tell it's usually a lot of mushroom mush and what would constitute as bread if they just baked it in an oven. Peas and beans in some mix is also common. Some of it looks like it was passed thru an animal. Just not parts you would eat. Then they spice the hell out of it so that it apparently is supposed to taste and smell like the meat. Which is a bit odd since their potential customers apparently hate meat.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 25 2025, @04:34PM
Oh, there are sections for the non-animal-proteins. However, it's just shoved in there along with everything else. The signage sucks. However, one must race to the bottom of the barrel for profit's sake!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 27 2025, @02:06AM
You don't need pork to make burgers.
It's a matter of choosing the right kind of beef.
The Joy of Cooking recommends making burgers from medium ground beef, not lean ground beef.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday July 24 2025, @10:06PM (3 children)
or, you know, will be lactose intolerant.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 24 2025, @10:41PM (2 children)
I wouldn't necessarily bet that this stuff will be lactose free., though it probably would be. It also might not have the proper oils.
I doubt that this is suitable for making cheese or yogurt. But casein has LOTS of uses. And I can see it as an additive to fast foods. I can see it as an additive to things like Oat milk, for improving the piss-poor protein levels that it currently has. Etc.
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(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday July 26 2025, @12:33AM (1 child)
Lactose is a sugar, if they're using this to produce proteins, then they would have to deliberately go out of their way to engineer things to create sugars as well as proteins.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 26 2025, @12:46AM
It sort of depends on how they engineered the bacteria. If the created the casein by implementing part of the mechanism used by cows into a bacteria, they might get lactose as a side effect. It's not like caesin is a really simple molecule, so they might want to copy the way it's built.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday July 26 2025, @06:34PM
TBH, eating bugs is only a big deal because of social conditioning and that ones not raised properly can potentially carry diseases. And, that ignores that some of the coloring agents are from bugs. A lot of the red dye used in food has come from bugs, so it's more of a performative thing that people don't want to eat bugs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sgleysti on Friday July 25 2025, @12:07AM
I think this is great; it gives people more options.
I should probably become Vegan based on my philosophical outlook but will admit that I have been lazy about making changes to my lifestyle to achieve that kind of consistency. I am admittedly fond of milk, cheese, ice cream, and eggs. If this bacteria sourced milk became widely available, it would make such a transition easier.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday July 25 2025, @07:34AM
Like all these things:
- I don't particularly care about eating an animal and I certainly don't care about eating an animal by-product that can be obtained in a cruelty-free way, like milk, eggs, etc. I don't want animals to suffer even if I'm about to eat them.
- I have absolutely no qualms about artificial flavours, colours, preservatives, etc. whatsoever. Throw it all in if it makes stuff taste better or last longer. European food standards are good enough that I don't have to worry about them.
- I would gladly eat any synthetic, lab-grown, animal-derivative or not, food that has ordinary nutritional content (i.e. I don't want to have to think "Oh, but this isn't real milk, so I now need to go have some calcium because it doesn't have any"). Whether that's through fortification or being present in the food itself, I don't particularly car.
- I have yet to EVER see any synthetic, lab-grown, etc. food derivative in the shops. It's all pie-in-the-sky stuff and never materialises as a commercial product, when it should be a thousand times easier to certify that a synthetic meat, for example, is free of pathogens.
- If it does appear in the shops, I will give it immediate equal ranking for my first purchase. I would ever try it if it was more expensive or a smaller quantity, just to see. But after that, as far as I'm concerned it's just another food. That is quite something, when you consider it.
- That means it needs to compete on taste, texture, colour, quantity, price, availability, consistency, usability, nutritionally etc. just the same as everything else. I don't particularly care if it's just a faceless blob, so long as it tastes okay. I do care if you can't cook with it, or it tastes like junk, or it costs a fortune, or I have to eat "real" food with it because it's nutritionally void.
If you can make cheese or yoghurt without the need for cows - which I totally understand the environmental argument of, even if I'm prepared to make the trade-off of having cows but getting beef, milk, etc. from them, then I will buy it. I'm not vegan. I'll still buy it. If the above applies.
We all keep talking about it, we all keep making "breakthroughs", we all keep getting how bad our food chain is shoved down our throat (animal cruelty, hygiene, contamination, supply chain fraud, cost, spoilage etc.), we all keep being told that there's not enough food to go around, that the world can't cope, that we'll need to start eating lab-grown food as a species, that animals products in particular are far less efficient, and so on.
And I've yet to see one damn product on the shelf in my country. Anywhere. Even in some expensive health food shop or the like. Nothing.
People fuss over putting warning labels about GMO food on their packaging and so on - I literally could not care if it helps the food situation.
But none of this stuff ever materialises. I'd buy it tomorrow, even if just as an expensiev experiment, if it appeared next to my normal cheese. But it never does.
Put it in a store... then I can get excited about it. Until then it's like yet-another-battery-improvement article, or another we'll-all-have-household-robots-doing-the-washing-up etc.
The fact that nobody has - nobody has commercialised this stuff despite all the funding going into it. It tells me one thing. It's just not possible at scale, or not ready. It either tastes like crap, or it's ridiculous expensive, or it can't be automated, or it's nowhere near a complete food and would trick people into malnourishing themselves (e.g. the whole Huel / Soylent thing is a good example... if you're going to recommend people eat your product in place of ordinary food... it has to be nutritionally capable of sustaining a human long-term).
Same with all the "we'll make food in space" articles. Sure. Go ahead. Great idea. We need it. Do it. And yet we haven't fed a single human for a single day on food exclusively produced in space yet. Let alone building self-sustaining Mars colonies and the like.
I love this and want this product. Where is it?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 27 2025, @02:03AM
I live in Montreal.
I've see various burgers be provided fir vegetarians, usually made with exotic biochemical processes to make them taste like real meat without the benefit if actual meat.
I've yet to find one that tasted good.
But last time I was in England with the family, one of us was vegetarian.
So we noticed the availability of vegetable burgers in the fast-food places.
I tried one.
It was delicious.
So what was the secret of English fast food companies?
It was dead simple.
The vegetarian burger patties were made to taste like the vegetables they were made of.
They tasted as good as vegetables can taste.
There was no attempt to make them resemble meat at all.
I have not found the like in Montreal.
-- hendrik