Graduate Student Literature Review: Methodologies and tools for synthetic biology for the production of next-generation dairy foods.

Abstract

Synthetic biology has played a foundational role in the dairy industry for decades, with continued advancements improving the efficiency, precision, and scalability of producing recombinant dairy foods and additives. As global demand shifts, the industry faces growing pressure to deliver products that are nutritionally optimized, sustainable, cost-effective, and broadly accessible. At the same time, numerous value-added dairy components, such as bioactive proteins and functional metabolites, remain underleveraged despite their biological and commercial potential. Synthetic biology offers a platform to industrialize these products. This review examines approaches in protein engineering, genetic modification, and heterologous expression of high-value dairy products in non-native organisms. Overall, this work provides researchers and industry stakeholders with a technological framework to accelerate the integration of synthetic biology into next-generation dairy food development.