Producing ‘natural’ flavors and fragrances with bacteria
July 20, 2012
(Credit: Ellen Levy Finch/Wikimedia Commons)
Major flavor and fragrance houses are intrigued by the possibility of using biotechnology to produce key components of essential oils from abundant sugar feedstocks via fermentation, reports Chemical & Engineering News.
For assistance, they are turning to the growing number of biotechnology start-ups that are targeting the flavor and fragrance industry. These firms, which include Allylix, Amyris, Isobionics, and Evolva, claim their microbial platforms can produce just about any plant-derived molecule, once they scale up.
Allylix and Isobionics are promoting the molecules valencene and nootkatone as their first products. Valencene is extracted from the peel of the Valencia orange. Nootkatone comes from grapefruit peels but can also be produced from valencene. Both are currently used in fruit-flavored beverages and in perfumes but have potential for use in personal care and cleaning products.
Fermentation-derived products may also replace some chemically synthesized molecules. The claim is that the process would be more environmentally friendly and produce ingredients that can be labeled as natural. Givaudan, for example, has patented a microbial route to vanillin. This common flavoring agent, a replacement for costly natural vanilla, is now synthetically derived from phenol.
With microbial production, a once-rare fragrance or flavor could be made in much larger quantities.
To replace nature-made scent and flavor ingredients, biotechnologists can examine extracts of blossoms such as lavender, jasmine, or ylang-ylang. Or they can look at the stems and leaves of fragrant herbs like geranium and patchouli. Seeds and fruits with pungent smell and taste include anise, coriander, vanilla, and juniper. The palette expands with the addition of fruit peels, roots, grasses, evergreen needles, woods, resins, and balsams.
If the goal is to trade up to fermentation-produced molecules from those made by chemical synthesis, possible targets include esters, ethers, aldehydes, hydrocarbons, and ketones.
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Comments (6)
by Bri
How about dogs that smell like roses! I can understand the disappointment of buying essences in today’s market. That will change dramatically really.soon! The new analogs will be identical to the original. Tech has come a long way!
by Bob Vasquez
Just buy organically-grown food.
by Dr Michael Becker
Two things: first, masking vanillin cheaper is regression for the consumer desirous of vanilla flavor because real vanilla is a combination of many chemicals not one; when natural vanilla is used every bite over time tastes good or like vanilla flavor. Vanillin is too pure such that in very short order one’s taste buds have become fully saturated and numed to where there is practically no vanilla taste. Second, in 1969 we honeymooned in Bermuda where my wife had traveled to as a child. Back then she took home several bottles of wonderful perfume made at the Perfume Factory there, jasmine and lilly I think. It was to be a treat for her to back there and get more as there were but dregs left in her old bottles. Disappointment reigned supreme as the contemporary perfume labeled the same as the old, was as vanillin is to vanilla. Although the factory had on display those flowers plucked fresh and resting atop sheets of wax from which the essential oils would fall onto and be easily recovered but in minute amounts, in fact they no longer did that, instead they used synthetic smells and anybody could tell the difference in quality and even color as the older variety was dark reddish brown or brown and the newer golden colored. While I would welcome those wonderful oils in inexpensive abundance, replicating their synthetic replacements would also benefit the manufacturers’ profits while defrauding the consumer.
by Bri
How about designer farts with gut bacteria!!! Today I’m strawberries, tomorrow I’m cotton candy!
by FistofBacon
Could this lead to “Smell-O-Vision”?
by GatorALLin
Orange you glad you didn’t say banana?