Recently, researchers from the Institute of Feed Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of Chinese Academy of Sciences co-concluded the one-carbon (C1) molecular gas protein (C1GP) as suitable protein substitute in aquaculture. The relevant review paper was published in Reviews in Aquaculture.

Aquaculture has been the fastest increasing food sector in the past certain decades and is considered to be so in the future. However, aquaculture strongly depends on wild-captured forage fish, which is unsustainable and costly. Hence, the development of cost-effective, nutrient-balanced and eco-friendly fishmeal alternatives is critical to satisfy the forecasted expansion of aquaculture. Among fishmeal alternatives, C1GP products have drawn more attention and commercial investment recently, since it is produced through the fermentation of microorganisms by utilizing the substrates from C1-related industrial exhaust gases, e.g., CH4, CO and CO2, which take less time, land, water and resources, remove greenhouse gases and waste materials, and offer sustainable protein sources.

This review paper systematically addresses the current main sources of C1 gas, available microorganisms, metabolic pathways, metabolic transformation, composition, product development, characteristics of C1GP products, as well as their contribution in aquatic feed and carbon-sink, which will encourage more scientists to move forward on the path to increasing knowledge on the application of C1GP in aquaculture.

The research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFD0900200; 2018YFA0901500) and other projects.

Original link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/raq.12707

                             By Wang Jie (wangjie03@caas.cn)