While most proteins live in their little piece of heaven, for a protein, food is a hell of an environment. However, some proteins ('extremophiles') live in extreme conditions such as scalding-hot springs, acidic swamps or the Dead Sea. By applying Agile-Integrative Computational Protein Design (AI-CPD) we change the amino-acid sequence of the protein to fit it to the mass-food market, respecting stability and sensory profile. Next, the protein is produced via precision fermentation by microorganisms.

Speaker:

Dr. Ilan Samish - Founder & CEO, Amai Proteins

Dr. Ilan Samish founded Amai Proteins (Amai meaning 'sweet' in Japanese) that is making the world's first healthy sweetener, enabling cost-effective sugar reduction without hampering the full-sugar sensory profile. Amai fits proteins to the mass food-market by coupling Agile-Integrative Computational Protein Design (AI-CPD) to sustainable, environmentally-friendly precision-fermentation. With a PhD (Weizmann Institute) and postdoc (UPenn), Ilan was a lecturer (Weizmann, Hebrew University, Braude College) in genetics, biochemistry, physical-chemistry and computational biology. He also founded the world’s main conference on computational structural-biology. After publishing the CPD book, he decided to devote his time to cure the food we eat rather than the diseases that result from it.