Gate­way to BLUE world

Antho­cy­an­ins, pig­ments found in plants, have enorm­ous poten­tial as nat­ur­al food col­our­ants offer­ing a range of col­ours from orange through red and purple to blue. Pub­lic con­cern over the tox­ic­o­lo­gic­al safety of syn­thet­ic food col­our­ants is increas­ing, res­ult­ing in the con­sequent ban­ning of sev­er­al red food dyes. There has been rising interest in the devel­op­ment and applic­a­tion of antho­cy­an­ins as food col­our­ants. Most antho­cy­an­ins (nearly 700 have been described in nature) are not avail­able com­mer­cially, so the con­sor­ti­um of the AnthoPLUS ERA-IB pro­ject (2014−2017) gen­er­ated a num­ber of plant cell cul­tures for pro­duc­tion of vari­ous antho­cy­an­ins at high levels. One of the major prob­lems with the wide­spread adop­tion of antho­cy­an­ins as nat­ur­al col­our­ants is the dif­fi­culty of repro­du­cing the intense blue col­ours achieved in nature (corn­flower, gen­tian, del­phini­um) in nat­ur­al col­or for­mu­la­tions. There is con­sid­er­able interest in achiev­ing strong blue antho­cy­an­in pre­par­a­tions and to improve the sta­bil­ity of antho­cy­an­ins such that they can be used as indus­tri­ally-reli­able, nat­ur­al col­our­ants repla­cing syn­thet­ic ones, like Syn­thet­ic Blue Num­ber One. Prom­ising blue col­ours based on antho­cy­an­ins from plant cell cul­tures were recently estab­lished with­in AnthoPLUS. AnthoPLUS (ANTHO­cy­an­in pro­duc­tion PLat­form Using Sus­pen­sion cul­tures) pro­duces antho­cy­an­ins, of vary­ing com­plex­ity in side chain dec­or­a­tion, or labelled with stable iso­topes as fine chem­ic­als. These can be used for assay­ing the com­pos­i­tion of feed­stocks for nat­ur­al col­ours, for bioavail­ab­il­ity, bioef­fic­acy and mech­an­ist­ic research in exper­i­ment­al medi­cine and as stand­ards for assay­ing nat­ur­al col­or­ant extracts for improved for­mu­la­tions. AnthoPLUS is sup­por­ted by the ERA-NET Indus­tri­al Bio­tech­no­logy 4^th Joint Call, fun­ded by their respect­ive nation­al and region­al agen­cies. The Leib­n­iz Insti­tute of Plant Genet­ics and Crop Plant Research (IPK. coordin­a­tion), John Innes Centre (JIC), Nor­we­gi­an Uni­ver­sity of Life Sci­ences (UMB), Insti­tute of Food Chem­istry and Tox­ic­o­logy, Uni­ver­sity of Vienna and the Trans­MIT GmbH, Pro­ject Divi­sion Plant­Meta­Chem (PMC), are part­ner with­in the AnthoPLUS con­sor­ti­um. Source: idw/​IPK Gatersleben