Just the thought of a cockroach wriggling anywhere near the dining could be very repelling to some people. What if science says that a protein found in cockroaches is downright a fantastic ‘protein supplement’ for humans.
Researchers from the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) in Bengaluru, have recently found the truth about this fantastic protein supplement which reportedly contains three times three times more energy per unit when compared with an equivalent mass of dairy.
“The crystals are like a complete food—they have proteins, fats and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids,” said India Today quoted Sanchari Banerjee, one of the main authors of the paper published in July in the journal from the International Union of Crystallography.
Having found about the protein, the scientists are now planning to generate it in large quantities with help of yeast microbes.
The researchers from the Institute have also observed that the newly found protein is a highly stable one and will have huge calorie values in human systems.
Scientists from other reputed institutes like National Centre for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health in the US, Structural Biology Research Centre, High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation in Japan, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) in India, Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto in Canada, University of Iowa in the US and Experimental Division, Synchrotron SOLEIL in France were part of the study.
