Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Published April 7, 2021 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Discovery of a natural cyan blue: A unique food-sourced anthocyanin could replace synthetic brilliant blue

Creators

  • 1. University of California, Davis
  • 2. Avignon University
  • 3. Mars Wrigley
  • 4. The Ohio State University
  • 5. Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati
  • 6. University of California, Davis, Davis
  • 7. Nagoya University
  • 8. University of Chicago

Description

The color of food is critical to the food and beverage industries, as it influences many properties beyond eye-pleasing visuals including flavor, safety, and nutritional value. Blue is one of the rarest colors in nature's food palette—especially a cyan blue—giving scientists few sources for natural blue food colorants. Finding a natural cyan blue dye equivalent to FD&C Blue No. 1 remains an industry-wide challenge and the subject of several research programs worldwide. Computational simulations and large-array spectroscopic techniques were used to determine the 3D chemical structure, color expression, and stability of this previously uncharacterized cyan blue anthocyanin-based colorant. Synthetic biology and computational protein design tools were leveraged to develop an enzymatic transformation of red cabbage anthocyanins into the desired anthocyanin. More broadly, this research demonstrates the power of a multidisciplinary strategy to solve a long-standing challenge in the food industry.

Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

Files

sciadv.abe7871.pdf

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Supplementary materials
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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/SCIADV.ABE7871
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:11048

Funding

National Science Foundation
1827246
National Science Foundation
1805510
National Science Foundation
1627539
National Institutes of Health
R01 GM 076324-11
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
P42ES004699
EU MaX Centre of Excellence
676598
Mars Incorporated
EU MaX Center of Excellence
824143

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering