Background: Profiling the plant root architecture is vital for selecting resilient crops that can efficiently take up water and nutrients. The high-performance imaging tools available to study root-growth dynamics with the optimal resolution are costly and stationary. In addition, performing nondestructive high-throughput phenotyping to extract the structural and morphological features of roots remains challenging. Results: We developed the MultipleXLab: a modular, mobile, and cost-effective setup to tackle these limitations. The system can continuously monitor thousands of seeds from germination to root development based on a conventional camera attached to a motorized multiaxis-rotational stage and custom-built 3D-printed plate holder with integrated light-emitting diode lighting. We also developed an image segmentation model based on deep learning that allows the users to analyze the data automatically. We tested the MultipleXLab to monitor seed germination and root growth of Arabidopsis developmental, cell cycle, and auxin transport mutants non-invasively at high-throughput and showed that the system provides robust data and allows precise evaluation of germination index and hourly growth rate between mutants. Conclusion: MultipleXLab provides a flexible and user-friendly root phenotyping platform that is an attractive mobile alternative to high-end imaging platforms and stationary growth chambers. It can be used in numerous applications by plant biologists, the seed industry, crop scientists, and breeding companies.
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Due to a growing challenge to feed the world’s population and an increased awareness to minimize the impact of our food choices on climate change, a more plant-based diet has gained popularity with a growing number of plant-based products on the market. To stimulate a plant-based diet that also improves long-term health, data are needed to monitor whether these products are healthy alternatives to animal-based foods. Therefore, this study inventoried 916 plant-based meat, fish, and dairy alternatives from eight Dutch supermarkets. The nutritional quality of each product was assessed by (1) the Dutch food-based dietary guidelines and (2) the Nutri-Score. The results show that over 70% of meat, fish, and dairy alternatives have an A/B Nutri-Score (indicating high nutritional quality), but do not comply with the Dutch dietary guidelines. This is mainly due to high salt and low vitamin B12 and iron content (meat and fish alternatives) or low protein and calcium levels (dairy alternatives). In conclusion, the majority of plant-based products are nutritionally not full alternatives of the animal-based equivalents; however, there are still opportunities for reformulation. To aid the consumer in making healthy plant-based food choices, a better alignment between the Nutri-Score and the recommended dietary guidelines is needed.
MULTIFILE
Micro and macro algae are a rich source of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, but also of secondary metabolites like phytosterols. Phytosterols have important health effects such as prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Global phytosterol market size was estimated at USD 709.7 million in 2019 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8.7% until 2027. Growing adoption of healthy lifestyle has bolstered demand for nutraceutical products. This is expected to be a major factor driving demand for phytosterols. Residues from algae are found in algae farming and processing, are found as beachings and are pruning residues from underwater Giant Kelp forests. Large amounts of brown seaweed beaches in the province of Zeeland and are discarded as waste. Pruning residues from Giant Kelp Forests harvests for the Namibian coast provide large amounts of biomass. ALGOL project considers all these biomass residues as raw material for added value creation. The ALGOL feasibility project will develop and evaluate green technologies for phytosterol extraction from algae biomass in a biocascading approach. Fucosterol is chosen because of its high added value, whereas lipids, protein and carbohydrates are lower in value and will hence be evaluated in follow-up projects. ALGOL will develop subcritical water, supercritical CO2 with modifiers and ethanol extraction technologies and compare these with conventional petroleum-based extractions and asses its technical, economic and environmental feasibility. Prototype nutraceutical/cosmeceutical products will be developed to demonstrate possible applications with fucosterol. A network of Dutch and African partners will supply micro and macro algae biomass, evaluate developed technologies and will prototype products with it, which are relevant to their own business interests. ALGOL project will create added value by taking a biocascading approach where first high-interest components are processed into high added value products as nutraceutical or cosmeceutical.
The global market for the industrial manufacturing of recombinant proteins (RPS) is steadily increasing and demand will keep rising in years to come. Currently, RPs are already an integral part of disease therapeutics, agriculture and the chemical industry and RP manufacturing methods rely heavily on host systems such as prokaryotes and, to a lesser extent, mammalian, yeast and plant cells. When comparing these host systems, all have their specific strengths and weaknesses and numerous challenges remain to improve protein manufacturing on an industrial scale. In this project, GLO Biotics proposes an innovative plant-based RP expression platform with the potential of significantly reducing costs and process requirements compared to the current state-of-the-art systems. Specifically, this novel concept is based on the use of coconut water as a natural, cell-free ‘protein production factory’. Coconut water in nuts aged 4-6 months is composed of free-floating cell nuclei devoid of cell walls, and it has been demonstrated these nuclei can express foreign proteins. Compared to existing platforms, the relative ease of delivering foreign protein-coding genes into this system, as well as the ease of recovery of the produced protein, potentially offers an innovative platform with great commercial attractiveness. In summary, the aim of this project is to provide a proof-of-concept for coconut water as a novel and competitive RP production platform by demonstrating the production and recovery of several commercially available RPs. To this end, GLO Biotics intends to collaborate with Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Zuyd) and the Aachen Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM) in demonstrating the potential of the ‘GLO-Conuts’ expression system. As a consortium, Zuyd and GLO Biotics will utilize their shared experience in molecular engineering and DNA vector technology and AMIBM will bring their expertise in plant-based RP production and recovery.
Voor een efficiënte opfok van vleeskuikens, met behoud van gezondheid van mens en dier, moet aan de dieren een kwalitatief voer met daarin een hoogwaardige eiwitbron worden verstrekt. Om aan de vraag naar eiwit te voldoen, gebruikt men in de veevoederindustrie doorgaans soja. Sojaproductie gaat echter gepaard met een grote ecologische voetafdruk en de vraag naar meer duurzaam geproduceerde eiwitbronnen neemt toe. De meeste eiwitbronnen hebben echter een eiwitverteerbaarheid die lager is dan soja. Bij gebruik van deze bronnen vindt daardoor meer microbiële afbraak (eiwitfermentatie) in de dikke darm en blinde darmen plaats, wat resulteert in darmschade t.g.v. giftige afbraakproducten en bacteriële groei van Clostridium perfringens. Groei van Campylobacter spp. leidt tevens tot gezondheidsrisico voor de consument. Naast een duurzaam productieproces, moeten eiwitbronnen daarom ook een hoge eiwitverteerbaarheid hebben. Uit gesprekken die gevoerd zijn door onderzoekers van de HAS hogeschool met nutritionisten van Agrifirm, het Feed Design Lab (FDL) en leveranciers van eiwitbronnen en voederadditieven, blijkt de noodzaak tot investering in duurzame eiwitbronnen. Hiermee voldoet de veevoederindustrie ook in de toekomst aan de vraag naar hoogwaardige grondstoffen, die door vleeskuikensector, de consument en de maatschappij wordt gesteld. Kansrijke eiwitbronnen worden beoordeeld door bestaande kennis m.b.t. duurzaamheid van het productieproces te centraliseren en in-vitro verteerbaarheidsonderzoek uit te voeren. In dit project werken HAS hogeschool, Wageningen Universiteit (WUR), Agrifirm en FDL samen in een consortium. In een eerste werkpakket leidt literatuuronderzoek tot een selectie van kansrijke duurzame eiwitbronnen. In een tweede werkpakket wordt middels een Boisson-analyse de verteerbaarheid van deze eiwitbronnen bestudeerd. In een volgend project wordt met dierproeven het effect van de meest kansrijke eiwitbronnen op darmfunctie, -gezondheid en dierprestatie bestudeerd.
