Our project is designed to make cheese products safer. If applied, this idea would influence current cheesemakers. However, if we would like cheese makers to consider our innovation, first we need to examine their suggestions because they are experts in making cheese and so can advise us on our project design.
We have arranged a phone talk with Vadimas Kličius, the director of new product development in “Rokiškio sūris” (a major cheese manufacturer in Lithuania) and discussed our project idea.
The takeout message from the talk was that mesophilic L.lactis bacteria culture is not an optimal choice for the biosensor. The bacteria culture could not be used in making hard cheeses and some of the soft cheeses, that we are aiming for this project, do not use L.lactis in the making process. To improve our project design, we have optimised codon sequences for a thermophilic bacteria Streptococcus thermophilus.
Also, Vadimas mentioned that GMOs in cheese are not acceptable and that would be the main issue in applying our biosensor in any cheese making company. This is why we are modelling the isolated cell detection system so we would not need to integrate modified L.lactis to cheese products.
