An Indian start-up company, Avisa Myko, has demonstrated that it could produce melanin at a much lower cost with its indigenous technology. The actual cost of a gram of melanin is around 400 USD. However, Avisa Myko could produce it at a cost of 10 cents per gram through its precision fermentation-based technology.
Melanin
Melanin is a polymer (that is, a long chain of similar molecules) and it originates from an amino acid called tyrosine. Melanin is a representative of the brown-black pigment commonly found in most organisms. Human body produces melanin as a defence against the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. It is widely found in melanin-producing animal cells, as well as in bacteria, fungi, and plants. Melanin occurs in most of the biosphere including the black colouration of the human eye, hair, and skin to the black insect epidermis and oxidation-induced discolouration of fruits. It is an important component of living organisms and cells. Melanin synthesis in organisms is primarily involved in the protection of host cells and organisms. It gives protection from UV radiation and energy absorption. It also protects from external physical changes and helps in maintenance of intracellular homeostasis through its physiological activity.
Melanin has high biocompatibility and diverse biological activities. It has been widely applied as a functional biomaterial in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, biopolymer, and environmental fields. Recent researchers have found that melanin is a multifunctional material. It is an organic semiconductor which is useful in bioelectronics such as pacemakers and biosensors. It is also useful in drug delivery as a protection from sunlight, and as a cathode material for batteries as it has the ability to split water in the presence of sunlight. Also, the use of melanin in materials science and green technology as a functional additive or coating, that could substantially improve the performance of conventional materials for different applications, has been studied recently.
The Indian Start-up
The Indian-start-up, Avisa Myko has become the world’s first commercial melanin company. It has been founded by Ravi Adgulwar in association with Dr Seshagiri Raghukumar. The company has developed a ‘precision fermentation-based technology’ to produce soluble melanin using a melanin-producing fungus. Precision fermentation is a fermenting method which uses microbial hosts as cell factories for producing specific functional ingredients.
According to a paper titled ‘Microbial Production of Melanin and Its Various Applications’, published in the ‘World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology’, in October 2020 the melanin present in fungi and bacteria is usually reported for its important role in the virulence of pathogenic organisms. The paper says that while there is no universal protocol for industrial-scale production of melanin a good way could be to produce melanin extracellularly using microorganisms. The paper seems to have inspired Avisa Myko to use microorganisms to produce melanin extracellularly at a very low cost.
Avisa Myko has presently moved its headquarters to the US in order to access funding. According to Ravi Adgulwar, the company’s core expertise is in algal and fungal biotechnology.
The market for melanin is huge. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US is concerned about the health and environmental damage caused by chemical-based sunscreens where melanin is the main ingredient. Only some chemical sunscreens protect against all wavelengths of UV rays. However, they are known to aid the formation of free radicals and disrupt hormones. Melanin-based sunscreens and hair dyes have zero-side effects. As melanin offers protection against gamma rays, it acts as a radiation shield. This start-up company is aiming to further cut the cost of melanin to one cent per gram using synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is an emerging science for synthesising DNA, which is different form gene-editing.
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