Sweets such as candies and cakes have gradually become popular due to their enticing flavors.
However, with the increasing amounts of sweeteners like lactose and fructose in these desserts,health issues have emerged.
According to surveys, the number of obese people around the world has increased dramatically year by year, and has even reached 890 million people. Also,422 million people with diabetes. In developing countries, on average, there are three diabetics in every four adults.
The diabetic community and obese people have to give up desserts for the sake of their health.
The fitness and body management crowd also shun sweets for the sake of being super fit.
Sugar seems to be the ‘worm’ in people's lives. When you eat sugar, it’s like you have become a sinner of your body.
But, is all sugar so harmful to one's health and figure?
Is there any sugar that can be enjoyed without the burden of sweetness?
Fortunately, there really is.
Tagatose, a natural sweetener and functional food ingredient, can perfectly balance sweetness and sugar content. It provides a delightful sweet taste without imposing additional health burdens.
However, tagatose is not widely used yet because of its high production cost and low yield. Fructose can be converted to tagatose by a single-step reaction at the c4 position, and is an ideal substrate to become a tagatose production.
To achieve efficient production of Tagatose, we screened four unknown functional proteins with potential Tagatose-4 epimerase activity by means of gene mining and used iterative mutation to enhance their activities.
Natural sources of Tagatose-4 epimerase are few and have low activity, and it is extremely important to identify new Tagatose-4 epimerase. We screened four sequences with potential Tagatose-4 epimerase activity using phylogenetic trees and docking free energy.
To address the common inclusion body problem during exogenous gene expression in Escherichia coli, we improved solubility during protein expression through pro-fusion tagging, molecular chaperones, and fermentation optimization.
However, due to the low enzymatic activity of the wild-type enzyme, we wanted to improve the ability to catalyze the production of tagatose from fructose by iterative mutagenesis.
Until now, Tagatose has not been able to come into the public eye due to its expensive price; we hope that our research can reduce the cost of Tagatose, so that everyone can enjoy the sweet taste without any burden at the same time.
