Flavour by design: food-grade lactic acid bacteria improve the volatile aroma spectrum of oat milk, sunflower seed milk, pea milk, and faba milk towards improved flavour and sensory perception.

Background: The global market of plant-based milk alternatives is continually growing. Flavour and taste have a key impact on consumers' selection of plant-based beverages. Unfortunately, natural plant milks have only limited acceptance.

Co-cultures of Propionibacterium freudenreichii and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens cooperatively upgrade sunflower seed milk to high levels of vitamin B and multiple co-benefits.

Background: Sunflower seeds (Helianthus annuus) display an attractive source for the rapidly increasing market of plant-based human nutrition. Of particular interest are press cakes of the seeds, cheap residuals from sunflower oil manufacturing that offer attractive sustainability and economic benefits. Admittedly, sunflower seed milk, derived therefrom, suffers from limited nutritional value, undesired flavor, and the presence of indigestible sugars.

Genome-based selection and application of food-grade microbes for chickpea milk fermentation towards increased L-lysine content, elimination of indigestible sugars, and improved flavour.

Background: Plant-based milk alternatives are more popular than ever, and chickpea-based milks are among the most commercially relevant products. Unfortunately, limited nutritional value because of low levels of the essential amino acid L-lysine, low digestibility and unpleasant taste are challenges that must be addressed to improve product quality and meet consumer expectations.

Results: Using in-silico screening and food safety classifications, 31 strains were selected as potential L-lysine producers from approximately 2,500 potential candidates.

A common approach for absolute quantification of short chain CoA thioesters in prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes.

Background: Thioesters of coenzyme A participate in 5% of all enzymatic reactions. In microbial cell factories, they function as building blocks for products of recognized commercial value, including natural products such as polyketides, polyunsaturated fatty acids, biofuels, and biopolymers. A core spectrum of approximately 5-10 short chain thioesters is present in many microbes, as inferred from their genomic repertoire.

Limited life cycle and cost assessment for the bioconversion of lignin-derived aromatics into adipic acid.

Lignin is an abundant and heterogeneous waste byproduct of the cellulosic industry, which has the potential of being transformed into valuable biochemicals via microbial fermentation. In this study, we applied a fast-pyrolysis process using softwood lignin resulting in a two-phase bio-oil containing monomeric and oligomeric aromatics without syringol. We demonstrated that an additional hydrodeoxygenation step within the process leads to an enhanced thermochemical conversion of guaiacol into catechol and phenol.

Mass isotopomer analysis of nucleosides isolated from RNA and DNA using GC/MS.

Nucleosides are biosynthesized from metabolites that are at key nodes of intermediary metabolism. Therefore, (13)C labeling patterns in nucleosides from ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in suitably designed isotopic tracer studies provide information on metabolic flux distributions of proliferating cells. Here, we present a gas chromatography (GC)-mass spectrometry (MS)-based approach that permits one to exploit that potential.