Nosh.bio Leverages Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services to enhance meaty taste of mycoprotein

Nosh.bio, a German startup developing highly functional ingredients from fungal biomass for animal-free food products, and Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building a platform for cell programming and biosecurity, have announced a new partnership. Nosh.bio will leverage Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services to screen for protein-producing fungi strains with superior sensorial profiles. By leveraging Ginkgo's ultra high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities, the program aims to produce a mycoprotein that delivers a rich, savory, and natural meaty taste when used in food products.

Companies developing animal-free protein still face challenges in creating tastier, less processed, and affordable alternative-protein products. Nosh.bio has built a technological platform that uses fungal biomass to create animal-free single-ingredient animal meat alternatives from mycoprotein for human nutrition.

For meat-alternatives, red meat – like a juicy steak – remains the most challenging product to be developed, and current alternatives contain many ingredients and chemical additives. Nosh.bio aims to leverage its highly efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective production process to create a single-ingredient animal-free product that tastes and feels just like red meat, while being healthier than an animal product.

To enable this advanced alt-protein product, Ginkgo aims to discover and deliver a strain of fungi with higher native proteins involved in achieving the rich meat taste, juiciness, and color that Nosh.bio is seeking. To do so, Ginkgo plans to execute a mutagenesis and screening campaign with its proprietary encapsulation and screening technology (EncapS), which can make it possible to search through up to one million strain variants in a single run and select the best performing candidates for further development. Using such an improved strain can help Nosh.bio develop a mycoprotein that is superior in taste, color, performance, and nutrition.

"Nosh.bio is eager to enable the transition from animal-based to animal-free products. Our affordable, high quality plant-based ingredients can build a product that's even closer to meat in taste and texture than alt-protein options currently on the market," commented Tim Fronzek, CEO & Co-Founder of Nosh.bio. "What really excites us about partnering with Ginkgo is their accelerated screening technology that can help us pinpoint and develop a super 'meaty' mycoprotein."

"We're thrilled to partner with Nosh.bio and help level-up the alt-meat protein industry to deliver sustainable products that taste closer to real meat than ever before," added Kalpesh Parekh, Vice President of Business Development at Ginkgo Bioworks. "Our proprietary encapsulation and screening technology can expeditiously deliver valuable insights that enable our partners to optimize their R&D efforts and overall product."