Sweet alternative sugar with less calories

Natural sugars with fewer calories than processed white cane sugar but the same taste, texture and cooking properties could soon be available on supermarket shelves - at a competitive price.

AIBN’s Dr Axayacatl Gonzalez and Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA)’s Dr Nathan Zhong are working with MSF Sugars to create highly valuable rare sugars in ‘microbial cell factories’ at the UQ Biosustainability Hub.

Clear health benefits

Dr Gonzalez said rare sugars offer the same sweetness as raw sugar with less calories, but production costs meant their price tag was a barrier to wider consumer uptake.

“These rare sugars occur in some fruits, and they are increasingly coveted as alternative food and beverage sweeteners by the hospitality and commercial food industries,” Dr Gonzalez said.

“The health benefits are clear, and the sugar industry clearly identifies this as an opportunity to diversify their offering, but large-scale production is currently limited.

Manufacturing the solution

“The good news is we are able to harness natural processes in our lab to produce a variety of rare sugar molecules, using fermentation technologies which provide a sustainable alternative for the manufacturing of these molecules directly from raw cane sugar.”

Further strengthening the project’s local foundations, it begins with bacteria commonly found in Queensland cane fields.

Dr Zhong engineered the bacteria’s metabolism to create microbial cell factories that can produce rare sugars from a cane syrup feedstock.

Raw sugar in, rare sugar out

“Once we have the right bacterial strain, the equation is pretty simple: raw cane sugar goes in, and rare sugars come out,” Dr Zhong said.

“These are products with much higher value than raw sugar because of the health and wellness benefits they offer as lower-calorie sugar alternatives.

“So far we have a library of bacterial strains capable of producing rare sugars when grown in UQ’s custom-built bioreactors.”

Diversification for the sugar industry

Australia is one of the world’s largest sugar exporters and the industry brings in $2 billion each year to the local economy.

MSF Sugar’s General Manager Businesses Development, Jia Poontanasombat, said the work at the UQ Biosustainability Hub could ultimately help Australian sugar producers remain competitive internationally.

“Rare sugars are a high-value commodity that possess obvious health and economic benefits,” Ms Poontanasombat said.

“The work being done at UQ’s Biosustainability Hub is paving the way for producers to diversify their product offering in a way that meets the health needs of communities around the world.”

Dr Gonzalez is the Facility Manager of cell design studio IDEABio which is housed within AIBN.

UQ's Biosustainability Hub uses synthetic biology to help the world’s biggest businesses transition to net zero.
Funded by government, industry and UQ, the $70 million Biosustainability Hub is a one-stop-shop for big companies to transform their production practices and create carbon neutral economically viable products and materials.