Soybean Functional Proteins and the Synthetic Biology

*Lilian Hasegawa Florentino, Rayane Nunes Lima and Mayla D.C. Molinari*

### **Abstract**

Recently, soybean consumption has increased, not only because of its potential for industrial and livestock use but also due to its beneficial effects on human health in the treatment and prevention of various diseases because soy can produce a wide number of functional proteins. Despite the soybean-producing high, elevated, nutritive and functional proteins, it also produces allergenic proteins, harmful secondary metabolites, and carcinogenic elements. So, recombinant protein systems that mimic the structures and functions of the natural proteins supply a single tunable and valuable source of advanced materials. But the availability of the technology to produce synthetic functional proteins is still limited. Therefore, Synthetic Biology is a powerful and promising science field for the development of new devices and systems able to tackle the challenges that exist in conventional studies on the development of functional protein systems. Thus, representing a new disruptive frontier that will allow better use of soybean functional proteins, both for animal and human food and for the pharmaceutical and chemistry industry.

**Keywords:** soybean, synthetic biology, bioengineering, functional proteins, proteome

### **1. Introduction**

Synthetic Biology allows for more sophisticated and complex engineering than the old genetic modification techniques. Involving scientific subjects and nonbiological engineering, including information technology, bioinformatics, and nanotechnology, synthetic biology strives to alter the organism's genes on a scale much bigger – their genome! – rewriting your genetic code, all chemical instructions needed to project, assemble, and operate a living organism. To invent new ways of life via biochemistry, created in the computer and made from off-the-shelf chemicals, will not just revolutionize biology, but it will also profoundly influence the definition of life, including what it means to be human [1]. The creation of new life forms could be a little bit threatening, although this is just a possible approach of Synthetic Biology that follows all the ethical precepts of modern science and that just has advanced in the field of microbiology, through research involving the development of the minimal genomes of a living organism, like, for example, the minimal genome of the bacteria *Mycoplasma mycoides* (JCV-Syn3.0) [2] and the project

Sc2.0 – Synthetic yeast Genome Project. Another approach less threatening and much more promising is the possibility of modifying existing organisms for "more useful" and economically applicable purposes, such as developing biofabrics to produce medicines or biofuels [3].

One of the oldest leguminous consumed by humankind, Soybean occupies an important place in the world food industry, offering oil and protein source consumption and bran-rich in proteins for animal feed. Generally composed of ~35–40% protein, ~20% lipids, ~9% dietary fibers, and ~ 8.5% moisture based on the dry weight of mature raw seed [4]. Soybean as a protein biofactory/bioreactor for various industrial purposes (cosmetic, pharmaceutical, biofuel, food) is deeply studied due to several aspects inherent to its easy cultivation in a greenhouse and its rich genetic variability [5, 6]. Two possibilities are explored for protein production in soybean, one involves the production of cisgenic proteins and the other consists of transgenic protein production. A typical example of the potential to produce bioactive proteins using soybean is in the therapeutic market. This market moves over 100 billion dollars worldwide and grows 20% annually. However, it is a market where production depends mainly on microorganisms and animals to sustain itself. Obtaining proteins from these organisms presents low productivity and high production cost, in the case of animals which involves debatable ethical issues [7]. However, with the advancement of scientific advances in biotechnology, bioinformatics, and omics technologies, the soybean has been shown a more sustainable, safe, and cheaper alternative to producing bioactive proteins when compared to production by organisms already used [7, 8].

Soybean-based agriculture faces several productivity and global sustainability challenges, including emerging threats from climate change and diseases, forcing the rapid adoption of short-to-long-term genetic innovation methods. Thus, the field of Synthetic Biology (SB or SynBio) is prepared to offer several technological solutions to rapidly improve the development of new soybean cultivars through genetic circuits, biosensors, metabolic engineering, and genome editing techniques. SynBio is a field of scientific research that integrates principles from mathematics, physics, engineering, and chemistry and applies genetic tools to develop bottom-up and top-down strategies to design technological products for industry, medicine, and agriculture (**Figure 1**). Thus, regarding the sustainable and technical management of soybeans (*Glycine max*), SynBio can usefully increase biomass production and harvest performance and dramatically transform existing genetic modification techniques. Furthermore, the omics tools have made remarkable progress [9–11] because there are few technical difficulties in obtaining complete soybean genomic sequences. However, the factor to be overcome is understanding the complex functioning and organization of the genome itself [12–18]. Thus, the combination of current genomic prediction, design, and synthesis techniques and the recently proposed genome editing methodologies could allow the rapid development of new bioreactor chassis for protein production [19–23].

Protein is one of the most important components in an essential diet for the survival of organisms; they supply adequate amounts of amino acids to the body. The availability of amino acids from food depends on various factors such as the source of the protein, prior protein processing treatments, interactions with other components of nutrition, their digestibility, absorption, and utilization in the organism [24]. Soybean is the most important source of low-cost proteins, producing more protein and oil per unit than any other leguminous crop, and it's the most consumed legume worldwide due to its functionality and nutritional value [25]. According to the USDA

*Soybean Functional Proteins and the Synthetic Biology DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104602*

**Figure 1.**

*Schematic representation of the concepts and applications of synthetic biology.*

nutritional database, soybean seeds consist of about 36.5% protein, 19.9% lipids, 30% carbohydrates, and 9.3% dietary fiber. Moreover, soybean is the largest source of protein used in livestock, 98% of soybean meal is used for animal feed (poultry, hogs, and cattle mostly), and only 1% is used to produce food consumed by the human population. Recently, the consumption of soybean proteins has increased due to some beneficial effects of their ingestion for human health in treating and preventing various diseases, like cardiovascular diseases and various forms of cancer. Soybean-based agriculture faces several productivity and global sustainability challenges, forcing the rapid adoption of short-to-long-term genetic innovation methods. Thus, the research field of Synthetic Biology is prepared to offer several technological solutions to rapidly improve the development of new soybean cultivars through genetic circuits, biosensors, metabolic engineering, and genome editing techniques.
