Last year we introduced the concept of Flavorator.

Here, we explain Flavorator's concept.

Food problems are serious matters in the world.

Among them is food preservation.

Ideal food preservation is keeping food without causing quality change for a long time and at low cost.

Various preservation methods have been used so far, and we created a new one.

It is "Flavorator"!!

Thirty years ago, “KOZOKO（香蔵庫 in Japanese）” was proposed by Professor Yozo Iwanami.

The name “KOZOKO” can be directly translated into ‘flavor (=KO, 香)’- ‘preserved (=ZO, 蔵)’- ‘box (=KO, box)’. However, “KOZOKO” is not just a flavor-keeping box but a box to preserve food in a fragrance.

Then, what flavors should we put in KOZOKO?

The flavors should have antimicrobial or insecticidal activities.

The best candidates are those of plant origin.

Plants cannot move to other places even when microbes or insects attack them. So, they produce antimicrobial or insecticidal agents.

These agents are mostly not harmful to humans and animals.

Therefore, “KOZOKO” with antimicrobial flavors would be an energy-saving substitute for an ordinary electric refrigerator.

In order to make “KOZOKO” practical two problems have to be solved.

First, we must select appropriate flavors and plants that can be cultivated under the various climate conditions.

Second, cost issues must be cleared.

Mass cultivation of plants and extraction of pure flavors from plants are time-consuming and expensive.

Consequently, at present “KOZOKO” is under the state of conceptual idea.

We created a new version of “KOZOKO” utilizing syntheticbiology.

We named it “Flavorator”.

And we want to solve Food problem all over the world!

Recombinant Escherichia coli produces antimicrobial and insecticidal volatile gaseous substances that suppress bacterial growth in the “Flavorator” and prevent insects from entering the “Flavorator”.

In the future,　“Flavorator” can slow down food decay and solve one of the food problems. This year, we started an action towards improvement of Flavorator.

We use E. coli as a model organism to show feasibility of Flavorator.

We decided to do the following.

First, we use high antimicrobial fragrance to synthesis easily in E. coli.

Second, we need to optimize E.coli to Flavorator.

○First, we chose farnesol as an effective fragrance which can be synthesized easily by E.coli. .

There are three reasons for this choice.

1. We can increase production of farnesol by overexpression of E.coli's endogenous gene because E. coli can synthesize farnesol in theory.

Fig1: Metabolic pathway of Escherichia coli.

2. Farnesol does not impair flavor of food because it is almost odorless.

3. Farnesol has a high antibacterial activity against food poisoning bacteria.

◯Second, we did three designs ,upon optimization of E.coli.

1. Construction of farnesol synthetic plasmid for E. coli

Plasmid Construction

REFERENCES

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