Precision fermentation and recombinant proteins as enabling technologies for scalable cellular agriculture.

Abstract

Cellular agriculture has emerged as a promising strategy for producing animal-derived food components through controlled biological processes while reducing the environmental and ethical burdens associated with conventional livestock production. Among its enabling technologies, precision fermentation and cultivated-cell systems offer complementary advantages but continue to face challenges related to production costs, scalability, and functional performance. Increasingly, hybrid cellular agriculture approaches combining precision-fermented proteins, cultivated cells, and plant-derived matrices are being explored to overcome these limitations and accelerate commercialization. This review examines recombinant proteins as critical enabling components within these integrated systems. Advances in microbial expression platforms, including prokaryotic hosts such as Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis and eukaryotic hosts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Komagataella phaffii, are critically evaluated regarding protein yield, product quality, regulatory suitability, downstream processing, and techno-economic feasibility. Industrial-scale fermentation capacities up to 80,000 L demonstrate the growing potential for large-scale recombinant protein production. Applications of recombinant proteins in edible scaffolds, serum-free culture media, extracellular matrix alternatives, and functional food ingredients are discussed alongside their associated technical and regulatory challenges. Ultimately, recombinant proteins are identified as integrative elements bridging acellular and cell-based production systems, supporting the development of scalable, economically viable, and sustainable cellular agriculture.