31 Aug 2015 Getting lettuce to make ‘miracle’ sugar substitute
Miraculin, derived from the ‘Miracle Berry’ can turn lemons into lemonade, really. In a quest to synthesize and commercialise this ‘game-changing’ non-calorific sweetener, is a start-up biotech firm in New York.
Alan Perlstein, the 32-year-old CEO of MiraculeX, an early-stage biotech startup in Manhattan, hands me a smooth, red berry, a little smaller than an almond.
“Let it coat your tongue, but don’t swallow the pit,” he advises, as I pop the berry into my mouth.
The fruit tastes like a cross between a mango, a cranberry and a strawberry. After a few minutes, I swallow the pulp and spit out the pit.
First, I bite into the slice of lemon on the plate before me, and it tastes like lemonade, both sweet and refreshing. Then, I try the slice of lime, which has an even more complex and pleasant sweetness. Perlstein tells me the effect can last anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours.
Perlstein has given me a raw Miracle Berry, also called Miracle Fruit, which originated in West Africa. The French explorer Reynaud Des Marchais first documented the fruit’s amazing properties in 1725.
Scientists have since learned that the fruit contains a glycoprotein, dubbed miraculin. The macromolecule, comprised of thousands of atoms, bonds to the tongue’s sweet receptors when it comes into contact with acid and distorts them, making sour taste sweet.
Once it’s picked, the berry is so finicky that it must be kept frozen, or freeze-dried because the protein degrades easily. It takes four years for plants to reach maturity, and a single berry costs the company about $1.50.
Synthesizing miraculin
So, MiraculeX is staking its future on a process to synthesize miraculin, using lettuce so that it will have an abundant and consistent supply.
The fruit, which first attracted entrepreneurial interest in the US in the 1970s, has inspired “flavoor-tripping” parties, and captivated a handful of innovative chefs, including the late Homaru Cantu, who wrote “The Miracle Berry Diet Cookbook” and opened a Chicago cafe, Berrista, featuring food pairings with the Miracle Fruit. Consumers can buy Miracle Fruit tablets or the raw fruit online.
But miraculin has also been the subject of intrigue and conspiracy theories.
Cantu, who died in April of an apparent suicide at age 38, wrote in a 2013 article that the artificial-sweetener industry had conspired to destroy Miralin, the company started by entrepreneur Robert Harvey in the 1970s to commercialize the protein.
In a 2008 interview with the BBC, Harvey reported that he was followed and his office was ransacked.
After that the FDA ruled in 1974 that miraculin, was a food additive, rather than a natural food product used safely for centuries, as Harvey contended. The company folded because it couldn’t afford the lengthy approval process.
“I don’t want to say anything conspiratory, but everything that happens with the Miracle Berry tends to not work out,” says Perlstein. “I try to be a little careful about what I do.”
The perfect substitute
Finding the perfect sugar substitute that tastes good and has no harmful effects is the food industry’s endless quest, given the growing worldwide epidemic of obesity and resulting health problems, such as diabetes.
Alternative sweeteners were projected to become a $1.4-billion market in the US alone this year.
The latest success has been the sweetener derived from the stevia plant, which had a worldwide market value of about $336-million in 2014, but its Achilles heel is a somewhat bitter aftertaste.
Perlstein first happened upon the Miracle Berry 10 years ago, when he was an undergrad at Touro College studying biology. He was looking to help his grandmother, a cancer patient, regain her pleasure in food after chemotherapy.
“I gave some to her. She loved it; it changed her mood,” he recalls. “I tasted it myself and it just blew me away. My mind was just reeling with the possibilities.”
Of course, for Perlstein, who has bootstrapped the year-old company with his two cofounders for $40,000, it is still mostly about potential.
They work out of Harlem Biospace, an incubator on West 127th Street in West Harlem, which offers wet lab facilities for early-stage biotech companies……