Plants that make muscle amino-acids?

[Spinnor]

Could plants be bio-engineered so that a large fraction of their seed mass was in the form of muscle amino-acids? Do soybeans have a large fraction of their mass in the form of amino-acids that make up muscle protein? I would like such a plant so I could stop eating animal meat and reduce my negative impact on the Earth. You might say just die and reduce your impact on the Earth. You might say that one does not have to eat meat to get required amino-acids. Shame on me that an animal dies because I like the taste of meat.

Thank you for your help.

[negitron]

What the heck are "muscle amino acids?" All proteins, regardless of whether they're of plant or animal origin, are built from the same group of 22 standard amino acids (the ones coded for by DNA, including 2 not normally found in proteins) and a bunch of nonstandard ones.

Like it or not, humans evolved to eat a varied diet including meat and life survives by eating other life. Ultimately, every living thing--including you--gets eaten and turned into other living things. Now or later, the environmental impact is identical.

[Spinnor]

What the heck are "muscle amino acids?" ...

Now or later, the environmental impact is identical.

10 pounds of (dry) grain for 1 pound (wet) steer muscle, hardly the same impact on the Earth?

[negitron]

What do you think will happen to that cow when it dies, which it will?

As for environmental impact, animals emit FAR more greenhouse gases than pants do. By eating an animal you're reducing those emissions! Plants, on the other hand, make oxygen which we need, y'know, to live.

[Phrak]

Could plants be bio-engineered so that a large fraction of their seed mass was in the form of muscle amino-acids? Do soybeans have a large fraction of their mass in the form of amino-acids that make up muscle protein? I would like such a plant so I could stop eating animal meat and reduce my negative impact on the Earth. You might say just die and reduce your impact on the Earth. You might say that one does not have to eat meat to get required amino-acids. Shame on me that an animal dies because I like the taste of meat.

Thank you for your help.

Eat a mixture of grains and legumes to obtain a good balance of amino acids.

This will suppy a start in good background information.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559467_2/corn.html

"Corn is an important food staple and animal feed. It is an excellent source of carbohydrates, but since it is low in total protein and the protein is of poor quality, a corn diet must be supplemented with protein-rich foods for satisfactory growth. Two genetic mutants, known as opaque-2 and floury-2, which cause a change to floury endosperm in normal dent corn in which they are found, have been discovered to result in an increase in tryptophan and lysine, two essential amino acids. These amino acids are in short supply in corn protein. The presence of either mutant gene in corn results in what is called high-lysine corn and renders it equivalent to skim milk in the diet of humans. Swine fed this type of corn will gain weight three times as fast as those fed normal corn. Plant breeders everywhere are now transferring these genes to varieties and parent lines of hybrids. The development is said to equal in importance the discovery of hybrid corn."

[Astronuc]

One needs a balanced diet. A combination of grains can provide the 10 essential amino acids as well as others.

Amino acids
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/problem_sets/aa/aa.html

Essential amino acids
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/Organic/essam.html which references
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/problem_sets/aa/aa.html#Essentialaa
Humans can produce 10 of the 20 amino acids. The others must be supplied in the food. Failure to obtain enough of even 1 of the 10 essential amino acids, those that we cannot make, results in degradation of the body's proteins—muscle and so forth—to obtain the one amino acid that is needed. Unlike fat and starch, the human body does not store excess amino acids for later use—the amino acids must be in the food every day.

The 10 amino acids that we can produce are alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine. Tyrosine is produced from phenylalanine, so if the diet is deficient in phenylalanine, tyrosine will be required as well. The essential amino acids are arginine (required for the young, but not for adults), histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. These amino acids are required in the diet. Plants, of course, must be able to make all the amino acids. Humans, on the other hand, do not have all the the enzymes required for the biosynthesis of all of the amino acids.

arginine (available from sesame seeds/flour)
9 essential amino acids available in quinoa or soy.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/AFCM/quinoa.html
histidine
isoleucine
leucine
lysine
methionine
phenylalanine
threonine
tryptophan
valine

arginine (required for the young, but not for adults)

Nutritional quality of the protein in quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa, Willd) seeds.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1546052
Quinoa
http://darwin.nmsu.edu/~molbio/plant/quinoa.html

Amino Acid Content in Wild Rice (Zizania Aquatica L.) Grain
http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/68/1/146
The content of 17 amino acids and protein percentage of five grain samples of wild rice grown in Minnesota were determined and compared to hard red spring wheat (Friticum aestivum L. em. Thell.) and spring oat groats (Avena sativa L.).

The wild rice grain tested had nearly twice the percentage. of the amino acids alanine, arginine, aspartic, lysine, and methionine than wheat grain. Wheat grain had about twice the percentage of cystine, glutamic acid, and proline amino acids as wild rice grain. The nine essential amino acids tested comprised 32.1 and 45.1% of the total amino acids in wheat and wild rice grain, respectively. The protein percentage was 17.1 for wheat grain and 14.2 for wild rice grain.

Generally the percentages of amino acids tested were similar for wild rice grain and oat groats except for slightly higher percentages of alanine, arginine, aspartic, and methionine in wild rice grain. Oat grain had higher percentages of cystine and glutamic acid than wild rice grain. The nine essential amino acids tested comprised 42.0 aml 45.1% of the total amino acids in oat groats and wild rice grain, respectively. The protein percentage in eat groats was 16.5% compared to 14.2% in wild rice grain.


Amino Acid Composition and Biological Value of Cereal Proteins (http://books.google.com/books?id=881IQhk--KYC&lpg=PA2&pg=PR7)
By Radomír Lásztity, Máté Hidvégi, International Association for Cereal Chemistry

Chemical and Biological Data of Rice Proteins for Nutrition and Feeding
see Table 1
http://books.google.com/books?id=881IQhk--KYC&pg=PA482&lpg=PA482

Amino acids in rice and wheat - see table 4
from Amino Acid Composition and Biological Value of Cereal Germs
http://books.google.com/books?id=881IQhk--KYC&pg=PA456&lpg=PA456

Cereal Proteins -- Past, Present, Future
http://books.google.com/books?id=881IQhk--KYC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3

Consider eating fish or seafood for other important elements such iodine.


Just to add one of my favorite foods - cashews
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/ac451e/ac451e0b.htm
Table 2. Amino-Acid Composition of Cashew Kernel Protein
Amino Acid Composition
(%)

Glutamic Acid 28.0
Leucine 11.93
Iso Leucine 3.86
Alanine 3.18
Phenylalanine 4.35
Tyrosine 3.20
Arginine 10.30
Glycine 5.33
Histidine 1.81
Lysine 3.32
Methionine 1.30
Cystine 1.02
Threonine 2.78
Valine 4.53
Tryptophane 1.37
Aspartic Acid 10.78
Proline 3.72
Serine 5.76

and
Food protein sources By Norman Wingate Pirie, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaninathan http://books.google.com/books?id=3kE9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94

[Moonbear]

10 pounds of (dry) grain for 1 pound (wet) steer muscle, hardly the same impact on the Earth?

HUH? Ruminants, like cattle, sheep and goats, are far more efficient than humans at converting the energy in fibrous plants into muscle, including being able to use the parts of plants that are not nutritive for humans, like the stalks. And, humans are far more efficient at digesting the muscles of animals than fibrous plants.

You can get complete proteins by combining different plants, but a diet with no animal products will still lack an essential B vitamin. While it's true that at least in the US a lot of people overconsume meat, dairy and eggs, a healthy diet doesn't eliminate them completely.

[Phrak]

HUH? Ruminants, like cattle, sheep and goats, are far more efficient than humans at converting the energy in fibrous plants into muscle, including being able to use the parts of plants that are not nutritive for humans, like the stalks. And, humans are far more efficient at digesting the muscles of animals than fibrous plants.

You can get complete proteins by combining different plants, but a diet with no animal products will still lack an essential B vitamin. While it's true that at least in the US a lot of people overconsume meat, dairy and eggs, a healthy diet doesn't eliminate them completely.

So... Where does B12 come from? This is very strange. From what I can gather B12 is originally synthesized in bacteria. Not seaweed, not yeast, not animals.

What organisms originally synthesis B12?

[Astronuc]

So... Where does B12 come from? This is very strange. From what I can gather B12 is originally synthesized in bacteria. Not seaweed, not yeast, not animals.

What organisms originally synthesis B12? Ostensibly it is one of the bacteria in the gut of ruminants that produces B12.

Only bacteria can synthesize vitamin B12.
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/vitamins/vitaminB12/
Table from Linus Pauling Inst.
Food Serving Vit B12
(mcg)
Clams (steamed) 3 ounces 84.0
Mussels (steamed) 3 ounces 20.4
Crab (steamed) 3 ounces 8.8
Salmon (baked) 3 ounces* 2.4
Rockfish (baked) 3 ounces 1.0
Beef (cooked) 3 ounces 2.1
Chicken (roasted) 3 ounces 0.3
Turkey (roasted) 3 ounces 0.3
Egg (poached) 1 large 0.6

So clams and mussels have high B12 contents. I would guess that this is from the bacteria they filter from seawater or which grow in them somewhere. Simiarly for crabs.

Beef (and presumabley sheep and goats) have much higher B12 concentration than poultry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#Sources
Vitamin B12 is naturally found in meat (especially liver and shellfish), milk and eggs. Animals, in turn, must obtain it directly or indirectly from bacteria, and these bacteria may inhabit a section of the gut which is posterior to the section where B12 is absorbed. Thus, herbivorous animals must either obtain B12 from bacteria in their rumens, or (if fermenting plant material in the hindgut) by reingestion of cecotrope fæces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumen

MIT biologists solve vitamin puzzle
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/b12.html
Vitamin B12 is produced by soil microbes that live in symbiotic relationships with plant roots. During the 1980s, an undergraduate research course taught by Walker resulted in a novel method for identifying mutant strains of a soil microbe that could not form a symbiotic relationship with a plant.
. . . .
More than 30 genes are involved in vitamin B12 synthesis, and "that's a lot to carry around if you don't need to make it," Walker said.
. . . .

Vitamin B12 synthesis by human small intestinal bacteria
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v283/n5749/abs/283781a0.html
We now show that at least two groups of organisms in the small bowel, Pseudomonas and Klebsiella sp., may synthesise significant amounts of the vitamin.