A slice of pizza. Beta-casein, successfully engineered into a plant at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, is one of the milk proteins responsible for making cheese melts. (Proformabooks, iStock by Getty Images)

Milk from seeds: Israeli scientists produce key dairy protein from safflower plant

Hebrew University researchers say beta-casein, which helps cheese melt, can be found in ‘cream’ pressed from seeds, eradicating need for cows, and slashing costs and livestock emissions

by · The Times of Israel

Hebrew University scientists have successfully engineered a plant to produce beta-casein, a milk protein that helps give cheese its melting properties, which they believe puts them on the way to beating international competition to produce plants that can literally be milked at an industrial scale.

“Milk is not produced sustainably,” said Prof. Oded Shoseyov of the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, who led the research.

“Some 15 percent of global warming gases are emitted as methane by livestock,” he said. “Today, with genetic modification, you can take the genes coded for milk proteins and transfer them to another organism that’s more efficient, saving a lot in terms of resource input and emissions.”

Shoseyov said the global dairy industry was worth more than $1 trillion last year and was expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2035, thanks to population growth and rising awareness of the nutritional value of milk protein.

The researchers first engineered the laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and then a drought-tolerant, oil-producing species, safflower, to manufacture the beta-casein, which is important for bone building. It also has curdling and emulsifying properties.

Almog Ozeri with the safflower plants. (Mai Shamir)

While engineering the seeds, the team was surprised to discover that instead of reaching the expected storage compartment, the milk protein formed structures resembling those that store natural casein in milk.

The best-performing plants produced beta casein at levels of around 1.26% of total soluble seed protein, which is much higher than many previous reports of casein production in plants.

Shoseyov said it was easy and relatively cheap to “milk the seeds” by putting them into a press and separating the resulting mixture into protein-rich cream and solids by centrifuge.

Almog Ozeri, Mai Shamir, Miron Abramson, Barak Cohen, and Amir Rudich participated in the research, with their results published in Frontiers.