Can Alberta rice fields be engineered to supply us with novel proteins? With Illimar Altosaar

Our human body comprises 20,000 different essential proteins, each made up of a unique sequence of amino acids, unique in length, composition and three-dimensional structure. If our genome, or epigenome, fails to nourish us with one or more of our own proteins, say insulin, to whom do we turn in order to acquire such essential biomedical proteins or biologics? If our industries require biocatalysts like food processing enzymes or biomaterial proteins such as silk, how easily could our Prairies produce such otherwise expensive and exclusive proteins?

Plant Protein farming is developing green sustainable technology to lower the production costs and simplify purification processes to enable cereals like barley and rice to supply recombinant proteins on a global scale. Dry Phission technology tethers or “paints” specific proteins onto the surface of starch granules in seeds. From harvested grain the starch granules are isolated by milling and air-classification allowing for dry gas liberation and collection of the pharmed protein.

Speaker: Illimar Altosaar

Illimar is Founder and CEO of Proteins Easy Corp. He has been working with cereal genetic engineering and plant proteins at Macdonald College, the Quebec Provincial Seed Farm, the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa and the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge. He has been innovating the molecular expression mechanisms and functional properties of proteins in genome-engineered plants. His diverse experience in genomics and biotechnology led him to envision PEC’s protein purification technology using dry flour streaming and dry fractionation.

Illimar was first to integrate a useful agronomic gene into the genome of the world’s number one cereal crop, rice. A strong believer in the potential of molecular farming, he is revolutionizing the production of commercial proteins. Current knowledge of genomics and protein production in rice is developing genome-engineered rice lines with high yields of Synthetic Spider Dragline Silk for athleisure textile applications.