KAIST researchers map path from lab to market for microbial food proteins

Microbial food — technology that uses microorganisms to produce proteins and food ingredients — is emerging as a new frontier in the future food industry. South Korean researchers have laid out an industrialization strategy to move the field beyond the laboratory and into mass production and commercial markets.

KAIST announced Monday that a joint research team led by Distinguished Professor Lee Sang-yup of the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, together with researchers from faculty startup Silico Bio, has conducted a comprehensive analysis of the conditions for success in the microbial food industry — covering manufacturing, markets and regulation — and presented a roadmap for commercialization.

Microbial food technology uses microorganisms either as a direct protein source or through microbial fermentation to produce proteins and functional food ingredients. It has drawn attention as a next-generation protein supply because it requires less land and water than conventional livestock farming and has the potential to lower carbon emissions during production.

The research team found that the competitive axis in the microbial food industry is shifting — away from how high a productivity can be achieved in the laboratory, and toward "manufacturing readiness," meaning the ability to reliably scale up production in an actual factory.

Achieving commercial viability requires solving a range of challenges: securing a stable supply of raw materials and maintaining quality control; managing microorganisms safely; cutting the downstream processing costs of separation, purification, concentration and drying after fermentation; and navigating regulations around the recycling of byproducts.

Looking ahead, the team projected that market competitiveness will hinge less on the superiority of any single strain or fermentation technology, and more on the ability to build an "integrated manufacturing platform" — one that links strain development, large-scale fermentation, purification, quality control and product development into a seamless whole.

That is because even within the same category of microbial food, the choice of raw materials, microbial strain and fermentation process can significantly affect production costs, energy consumption and the quality of the final product.

The researchers also projected that the applications of microbial food will extend well beyond simple alternative proteins. They said the technology can expand into a circular biomanufacturing platform — one that uses precision fermentation to produce functional food ingredients and high-value biomaterials, while recycling byproducts and renewable resources.

Silico Bio, which participated in the research, is working to build a platform that connects microbial-based proteins and functional food ingredients through industrial-scale fermentation, scale-up and product development, drawing on the manufacturing readiness strategy outlined in the study.

In the near term, the research team sees the greatest opportunity in alternative proteins, functional food ingredients, and high-value food components such as flavors, pigments and emulsifiers. Over the medium to long term, they project the strategy can expand into precision fermentation-based biomaterials, biomanufacturing from industrial byproducts, and manufacturing approaches tied to a circular protein economy.

"Microbial food is growing into a core industry that will determine national biomanufacturing competitiveness, not just the future of food," Lee said. "Going forward, what will determine competitiveness is not foundational technology itself, but how quickly an industrialization ecosystem can be built to connect that technology to actual production and markets."

The findings were published in the international journal One Earth on July 17.