From wine and cheese to coffee and chocolate, fermentation with bacteria and yeasts has for millennia enabled people to produce a wide range of prized flavors. More recently, industrial fermentation of genetically engineered microbes has been used to produce a number of valuable extracted flavors. By transferring enzyme pathways from a diverse set of organisms through synthetic biology, engineers coax microbes into producing an array of cultured flavor ingredients that can offer benefits in supply chain stability, cost, sustainability, and transparency. While these cultured ingredients are labeled natural in the US and EU, there has been considerable consumer advocacy challenging the natural label for products of genetically engineered processing aids, calling into question the future of these ingredients. At the same time, chefs, artists, and others pushing boundaries in the culinary world have embraced the potential for GMOs to expand their sensory creativity.
In this presentation, Christina Agapakis will discuss the intersection of biology and technology and how it is blurring the already complex distinction between artificial and natural in the world of food ingredients. As the ability to engineer microbes improves, there are new opportunities for addressing sustainability challenges and making exciting new products, in flavor and beyond. As consumers become more and more empowered to question and understand how their foods are made, there are also new opportunities to rethink how scientists and producers engage in meaningful dialog about the present reality and future potential of this important technology.