The future of fungi
Fungi are “nature’s biological recycling machines,” says guest Vayu Hill-Maini, a former chef turned bioengineer.
That is, they take waste and turn it into good things. Hill-Maini now melds his scientific and culinary skills to create not only new foods, but also medicines, faux leather, pigments and other valuable products from mushrooms and molds. He uses CRISPR gene editing technology to “domesticate” these fungi – removing off-flavors and increasing nutritional content to make new-age cheeses, burgers, salami, and more. “We call it the DBTL cycle – design, build, taste, learn,” Hill-Maini tells host Russ Altman about his creative process on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Russ Altman: This is Stanford's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. Since we started this podcast eight years ago, it's become an archive of the amazing and impactful work done by my colleagues at Stanford University. In a time when the sheer volume of information available to us can make our head spin and make it hard to determine what's accurate, I'm proud to be able to bring you experts in law, medicine, engineering, technology, and much more.
[00:00:27] Vayu Hill-Maini: One of the really interesting things about fungi and, and molds and mushrooms is that they are nature's recyclers. They're basically nature's biological recycling machines. They grow on what we consider waste: wood, leaves; you know, they basically will just chomp that up and eat it and digest it. So our idea here, I think at the core of the lab, is how can we tap into that natural ability to eat food waste, agricultural waste, maybe even plastics, and then use the fungi to then convert that into something useful?
[00:01:05] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. If this podcast brings you value, then consider rating and reviewing it to show your appreciation and to give us some feedback. We'd love to get a 5.0 if we deserve it, and thank you very much for giving us your thoughts.
[00:01:21] Today, Vayu Hill-Maini will tell us that mushrooms and molds can be the source of nutrition, new medications, as well as new materials. It's the future of food.
[00:01:33] A quick reminder that at the end of my conversation with Vayu, we'll do the segment, The Future in a Minute, where I ask him some rapid-fire questions, he'll give me some rapid answers, and that'll be the future in a minute. Again, before we get started, remember to rate and review the show. It really does help.
[00:01:55] You know, when we think about molds and mushrooms, there's a couple of things we can think about. We can think about our favorite most delicious mushrooms that we love added to our food. We saute in olive oil, we add some garlic, whatever. It can be very delicious.
[00:02:08] But we also think about molds and mushrooms that grow on dead stuff. We know that there's kinda gross stuff on old fruit. We see outside sometimes a piece of wood that's moist, has fungus and mushrooms growing all over it. Eh, not so attractive. But we've been using foods like mushrooms forever, for thousands of years. And in other cases, like plants and vegetables and animals, there's a long history of husbandry, where we slowly and selectively breed them to make the corn bigger and more tasty, to make the beef or the pigs better for eating if, if you're a meat eater, and things like that.
[00:02:48] Well, it turns out that for mushrooms, they really look about the same that they looked thousands of years ago. They haven't changed that much, and yet they're a great and important source of food. They have protein, they have vitamins, they have carbohydrates, and they have molecules like antioxidants. So they're very valuable.
[00:03:07] Well, Vayu Hill-Maini is a, both a professor of bioengineering and a Michelin star chef who is very interested in engineering these molds and mushrooms to become delicious foods. But more than that, he thinks that they should also be a source of new medications, there's a long history of mushrooms providing us some of our medications, and a source of new and potentially colorful materials.
[00:03:33] Vayu, thanks so much for joining us. And to start out, you've been a chef, a pretty darn good chef, and now you're a professor of bioengineering at a research university. How did that happen?
[00:03:45] Vayu Hill-Maini: Um, sometimes I wonder how that happened myself, too. I think, uh, you know, looking, looking back at the journey, it's, uh, it's, uh, taken its own twists and turns. But the sort of story is that I grew up in Sweden, uh, in Stockholm, uh, in a multicultural home, and I fell in love with cooking when I was really young. And so, for a long time, I kinda thought that's what I wanted to do in life, to cook and to share food and to explore culture through flavor. And I originally moved to the US from Sweden to pursue that dream, working in restaurants, working in food.
[00:04:17] And it was during these experiences in the kitchen that I actually discovered science. Not only 'cause science is cool, inspiring and, you know, awesome, but because for me, it provided a new lens through which I could look at food, you know? There's engineering, there's physics, there's chemistry, there's biology in the kitchen, in the food we eat. And by applying this, we could actually make food better, more interesting, more sustainable.
[00:04:40] And so it's kind of that realization that then led me to go into do a PhD, to do research, and sort of continue on that journey. And it's always been kind of connected to my interest in food. So I would say that now as a professor, I'm still cooking, but just in a different way, you know? With, with different kinds of reagents and ingredients in a different setting. Um, but, but, but that's sort of the journey, I've always wanted to find ways to connect food and science.
[00:05:06] Russ Altman: That's fabulous, and we're definitely gonna talk about both food and science, but, uh, it's just really interesting to me 'cause as I, as I understand it, you know, whenever we hire, uh, at, at a university, a new faculty member, they get a laboratory, and we make the hoods, and we make the benches, you know, so for the pipettes and all the equipment.
[00:05:23] My understanding is that as part of your build-out of your lab, there's not just all of the lab benches and stuff, but there's also a kitchen?
[00:05:32] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly. I mean, and that's been one of my dreams since I was very young, kind of how can we bring these worlds together? You know, they traditionally kind of live pretty separately. You have the high-end restaurants pushing the frontiers of gastronomy and cooking, and on the other hand you have labs discovering the inner workings of the universe. But I think there's a magic that can happen when those worlds come together.
[00:05:52] And, you know, as I was thinking about what I wanted to do and in my life and, you know, always being kind of confused about how these two identities and interests could fit together, um, I found that, you know, Stanford was really exciting and inspiring because they were like, they sort of got it. And they said, "You know what? I think this is possible. We can build a kitchen, we can build a lab, and we can build them together." Um, and, you know, the, the lab is sort of finished, the kitchen is so- soon finished, and yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's a dream come true. I can't wait to see what comes from it. It really is exciting.
[00:06:24] Russ Altman: And two que- two logistical questions. I'm assuming that they have to separate the kitchen from the lab for safety reasons.
[00:06:32] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly.
[00:06:33] Russ Altman: Okay.
[00:06:33] Vayu Hill-Maini: That's correct.
[00:06:36] Russ Altman: Secondly, selfishly, what about a little cafe or a table where I can sit down and try your stuff?
[00:06:42] Vayu Hill-Maini: You're gonna have to talk to Stanford about that. Just kidding. Um, we will have, as part of, uh, you know, our kitchen, hopefully outreach and engagement with the Stanford community and also the public as a way to, you know, kind of bring people in and teach them and, and have them taste, you know, what the future of food could look like.
[00:07:01] And so part of the kitchen sort of design is to have a little sort of area where people can sit and interact and taste as things are being prepared. And of course, as part of our research, we're also gonna run sensory trials as we develop something new, uh, you know, with new ingredients or new flavors. We wanna see what do people think, and collect data on that to inform how we make them better. So I think that will be an awesome opportunity for people to get involved and and sort of see what we're up to.
[00:07:26] Russ Altman: Okay. I'll, I'll... Let me know when reservations open up and, uh, I'll, I'll get a OpenTable. Uh, okay. I
[00:07:31] Vayu Hill-Maini: Will do.
[00:07:32] Russ Altman: Uh, so, um, getting into the science a little bit, I know that n- and I don't wanna... I, I, of course, I don't wanna limit what we talk about, but one of the main areas of focus in your work has been, uh, fungi, mushrooms, uh, and, and, and, and other things, um, and molds. And so, before we get into what the actual science is and what you're doing, I think it would be useful for you to explain to people what are mushrooms and fungi and molds like? We all see them. We kind of generally know what they are. But biologically, uh, as a, as a, as an academic, um, tell me about the lifestyle and how they grow and what their history of... maybe a little bit of their history of use as foods.
[00:08:10] Vayu Hill-Maini: That's a great question. Uh, I think for a lot of fun- people in the world, maybe in this part of the world, where, we're in, we're in The US, pe- people might be a little bit like, "Oh, fungi. Like, ooh, I don't, you know, I don't know about that." um, other cultures, people are really excited and embracing because there's a long history of using and consuming and interacting with that.
[00:08:27] But basically, you know, fungi are a kingdom in the tree of life, you know. Fungi encompass the yeasts like Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used to make bread and beer. That's probably the most familiar fungus of them all.
[00:08:40] Russ Altman: And valuable.
[00:08:40] Vayu Hill-Maini: There's also... What did you say?
[00:08:42] Russ Altman: And valuable, I mean-
[00:08:43] Vayu Hill-Maini: Valuable ...
[00:08:44] Russ Altman: Beer and bread you know, we could stop right there.
[00:08:46] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly. But I think, you know, Saccharomyces is awesome. It's cool. It makes tasty things. I'm really excited about another group of fungi called the filamentous fungi, the fungi that grow as multicellular filaments.
[00:08:58] So instead of a single cell like a yeast, they grow as this sort of network and tissue called mycelium, and that includes both molds, sort of the fluffy stuff you might see growing on a, you know, spoiled fruit in your fridge as well as mushrooms, the things you might see in the forest growing or at the grocery store.
[00:09:16] And these fungi, these filamentous fungi, have a really interesting history. They've also been used for food production for thousands of years as well. Blue cheese or Camembert or Brie are only made possible because of filamentous fungi, a mold called Penicillium Soy sauce, miso, sake, only made possible because of a mold called Aspergillus.
[00:09:39] So even though we might not know that, they're ubiquitous in our lives, and they've been the source of many important innovations that have really had an impact on humanity. For example, penicillin came from Penicillium molds. Statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, also came from filamentous fungi. Psychedelics like psilocybin come from mushrooms. So, I would say in addition to their use as food, they've been very important sort of commercially and, and, and, and had a very powerful impact on our society.
[00:10:12] Russ Altman: Yeah. So this is great. Thank you. So that was a beautiful, almost as if you'd done it before, uh, summary of, of the, the role of these foods. So, let me ask a few detailed questions.
[00:10:22] Um, have funguses or fungi, fungi, uh, have they been domesticated? And what I mean by that is, for many of the foods that we eat, there's a long history of husbandry. Uh, to forget about the bioengineering with in the lab, just people who are, like, nudging the things to become bigger, to become more tasty.
[00:10:42] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Russ Altman: Is this something that has happened to these fungi over time?
[00:10:46] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes, it has. And it's interesting if you look at sort of molds versus mushrooms. So in the case of molds like Penicillium, used to make blue cheese, or aspergillus, used to make soy sauce, you actually see that over time, over thousands of years of history, there's been a significant genetic changes. Basically, they've been tamed. Maybe in the wild they're competing for nutrients, and they're trying to kill off everything around them.
[00:11:12] But as humans have sort of taken them under their care, they become more friendly, and we've changed their flavors, their textures, their appearance, all by kind of modifying the DNA through this sort of experimental evolution process almost.
[00:11:25] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:11:26] Vayu Hill-Maini: Kind of like
[00:11:26] Russ Altman: selection, like you get a big cow. You want a big cow-
[00:11:29] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly
[00:11:29] Russ Altman: ... you let that cow reproduce, um, or you get a big piece of corn.
[00:11:33] Vayu Hill-Maini: And, and there are really interesting examples of that. Like, we have discovered, for example, a fungus called Neurospora intermedia that was domesticated to turn waste into food.
[00:11:42] People grow it on soy milk waste or other kind of sources, historically in Indonesia. And through that process, it was domesticated to basically say, "Let me grow on stuff that humans normally don't eat and turn it into food." Okay. So there's a lot of cool examples, and I think we're just scratching the surface.
[00:11:58] I do wanna say, though, when it comes to mushrooms, the things that you see in the grocery stores, that's a major, I would say, food crop, right? You have plants, and you have mushrooms. We cultivate them, we grow them. Plants have undergone dramatic changes in their morphology, their shape. Mushrooms are very similar to how they used to be back in the day.
[00:12:18] Maybe the biggest noticeable difference is the brown mushroom turned white, you know?
[00:12:23] Russ Altman: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:24] Vayu Hill-Maini: But there's a lot of kind of... I think maybe we don't understand enough, but I don't, also don't think we have domesticated them quite as much as we have with the other fungi.
[00:12:32] Russ Altman: Yes, because we, we see these pictures, for example, y- uh, of corn and the, the natural corn, you know, five kernels all kind of gnarly looking.
[00:12:40] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes.
[00:12:40] Russ Altman: And then we buy the corn at the store and it's beautiful, everything's in array, it's yellow, it's sweet. Um, but, uh, what I'm hearing you say is that has not happened yet, and, and, you know, stay tuned, it has not happened yet for, for the mushrooms. Is there, is there a reason-
[00:12:54] Vayu Hill-Maini: Not to the same extent at all ...
[00:12:56] Russ Altman: Have, did farmers try to do this? 'Cause farmers, you know, in my experience, farmers over the year, over the years have been incredibly like, you know, innovative just, you know, they get money. Have they tried and have these mushrooms resisted kind of domestication? Or, or w- why, why do they look the same?
[00:13:15] Vayu Hill-Maini: It's a good question, actually. I mean, sometimes we don't capture the attempts, we only see the outcome of the process.
[00:13:22] Russ Altman: Right. Right.
[00:13:22] Vayu Hill-Maini: But so it's hard for me to sort of say, like, to what extent people tried. I will say that, like, mushrooms, I think maybe are a little bit more, more mysterious than plants, you know? And, and, and maybe sort of our handle on their biology is, is a little bit more limited. I think, you know with the long history of plant science as well as sort of the advances that we've seen in molecular biology and, and genetics, I think there's, there's been a lot more, uh, sort of success cases and, and, and outcomes there that we can look to. I think with mushrooms, you know, like, there hasn't maybe been as much research and, and, and sort of resources, and they are-
[00:13:57] Russ Altman: Yeah ...
[00:13:57] Vayu Hill-Maini: complex in a, in a different way. They-
[00:13:59] Russ Altman: Yes ...
[00:14:00] Vayu Hill-Maini: you know, with, as far as the sexual mating and, and how to figure that out and stuff. So there has been breeding, I would say, but not to the same extent where you fundamentally have changed, you know, how it looks, or tastes, or how it behaves.
[00:14:11] Russ Altman: Great. And I know, and we're gonna get to this, that one of your major scientific goals is to create a toolbox that will allow you to, uh, make it easier to engineer mushrooms, so to speak, and we're gonna get to that.
[00:14:23] But before that, I think maybe my last question in terms of the foundations is, for people are very aware now of the, of the value, the nutrition value of various things.
[00:14:33] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:14:33] Russ Altman: We know that, like, grains are good and, and nuts are good and other things maybe not so good. Tell us about mushrooms as a food source as they exist now. Like, are they a high source of protein or carbs or vitamins? Give us a, and I know that there are a lot of different ones, so I'm, I'm asking you to kinda summarize the landscape a little bit.
[00:14:52] Vayu Hill-Maini: Uh, I think one of the things that people might not appreciate is that, you know, fungi are more closely related to us than plants are, which means that they have more similar nutritional requirements and profiles.
[00:15:03] So a lot of fungi contain all the essential amino acids, which some plants actually lack, and they have sort of maybe more similar, you know, proteins, uh, digestibility and stuff, um, compared to may- to maybe plants. And on top of that, you know, fungi provide fiber. They also provide vitamins, like B vitamins. And then, I think finally, potentially beneficial molecules that are not sort of vitamins, they're more like, yeah, beneficial molecules with sort of health benefits.
[00:15:35] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:15:35] Vayu Hill-Maini: One of them is called ergothioneine, which is a, a very powerful antioxidant that humans have actually evolved a receptor to take up specifically. And so, there's some examples of, you know, sort of medicinal, sort of therapeutic potentially benefits of fungi, um, that it's an additional layer maybe of, of what they could provide in the diet. One of the things, though, is that, you know, mushrooms in particular are full of water, so even though they can be a good source of protein, you know, a lot of what you're eating in w- is water.
[00:16:03] Yes, I, I know this when I saute them in my olive oil-
[00:16:06] Exactly
[00:16:06] Russ Altman: ... every morning.
[00:16:09] Vayu Hill-Maini: Um, but it is, uh, you know, I think it is, it, it's interesting as people might not appreciate that, but they, they do, they come with, with a lot of significant nutrients, good amino acids, and I think maybe most importantly, they're delicious.
[00:16:21] Russ Altman: Great. Okay, so now thank you so much. Now let's get to your research program. Uh, tell us the kinds of things that you're doing in the lab, either that you have done or if you can tell us about things that are on the way. What drives the lab? What are the experimental approaches? Um, tell us about the science of, of engineering molds and mushrooms.
[00:16:40] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah. So I mean, we're really motivated by addressing challenges in sustainability. Um, you know, we have a lot of challenges in the food system, in the manufacturing, in a lot of sort of areas of our lives that we think that biology could play a role to address, and we're very excited about fungi.
[00:16:56] Fungi, I wanna say, like there are bad stuff they do. They cause, you know, disease to crops, and they can also cause disease to humans in some cases. But we're excited about the good stuff that fungi can do and what they can give us. Um, and, and really kind of try, try to tap into that potential to address sustainability challenges.
[00:17:16] One of the really interesting things about fungi and, and the molds and mushrooms is that they are nature's recyclers. They're basically nature's biological recycling machines. They grow on what we consider waste: wood, leaves. You know, they basically will just chomp that up and eat it and digest it. So our idea here, I think at the core of the lab, is how can we tap into that natural ability to eat food waste or agricultural waste-
[00:17:43] Russ Altman: Right
[00:17:43] Vayu Hill-Maini: Maybe even plastics, and then use the fungi to then convert that into something useful. Food is a big focus of our lab, but also maybe materials or chemicals or other things-
[00:17:54] Russ Altman: Yes ...
[00:17:54] Vayu Hill-Maini: Through the power of bioengineering and genetics. You know, I think really it's interesting that I think this gives us an opportunity to work with biology rather than against it. We're not trying to over-engineer this bacterium to grow on waste and, you know, it already does this. We just have to kind of fine-tune it towards the outputs we're excited about. So-
[00:18:15] Russ Altman: Yes
[00:18:16] Vayu Hill-Maini: ... I would say that's sort of a general framework that involves, uh, involves, uh, and informs what we're trying to do in the lab.
[00:18:22] Russ Altman: When we think about the food aspect, um, I'm sure you've dealt with this, um, uh, uh, how do you convince your people- now, now I'm talking to you as a chef.
[00:18:31] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:18:31] Russ Altman: How do you convince people to eat stuff that grew on waste? Even though they might know it for normal, uh, uh, fungi and mushrooms, they might conveniently be able to forget it, but, like, how do you have that conversation?
[00:18:45] Vayu Hill-Maini: That's a really great point, and I think it kind of brings up a broader point which is, you know, as we think about food and, and creating new foods and tapping into this amazing ability for food to, you know, food waste upcycling conversion, it's not just technology, right? Like, food really touches on our-
[00:19:00] Russ Altman: Right, right
[00:19:00] Vayu Hill-Maini: psychology, our emotions, our history, our tradition. So that is sort of the inspiration about having a kitchen so that we can have those conversations. And we particularly work very closely with chefs. We try to think about what is the language we have to create around this? How do we sort of ask and inform people?
[00:19:16] How do we take the temperature of, of what's going on? So I think sometimes, you know, as scientists, we put our blinders on and we create something really cool technology, and then when it comes out in the world, there's all these sort of unanticipated reactions and consequences.
[00:19:28] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:19:29] Vayu Hill-Maini: GMO or genetic modification of plants is one example of that.
[00:19:32] Russ Altman: Right.
[00:19:32] Vayu Hill-Maini: Um, I think by involving kind of other stakeholders in the scientific process, we hope to be able to get to those, those questions. And, and I, you know, I wouldn't say that I have an obvious answers today, but I think that if we, if it's delicious and people can sort of say, "Wow, I wanna have more," creating desire is a really good starting point.
[00:19:55] You know, people-
[00:19:55] Russ Altman: I love it
[00:19:55] Vayu Hill-Maini: ... are not gonna buy it because it's green, you know, okay, sustainable, and it saves this many, you know, acres of land or whatever. I think we have to connect to something deep and emotional and, and again, that's where chefs can really, really help us.
[00:20:08] Russ Altman: This is The Future of Everything with Russ Altman. We'll have more with Vayu Hill-Maini next.
[00:20:22] Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, and I'm speaking with Vayu Hill-Maini from Stanford University. In the first segment, we did a romp through molds and mushrooms, what they are biologically, what the history of eating them and using them for useful purposes is, and a little bit about how they're starting to be engineered gently to create new foods.
[00:20:43] In this segment, I wanna push that a little harder and find what kind of things is Vayu doing to these mushrooms and molds to make them more delicious and more edible. Don't forget, at the end of this segment, I'll have the Future in a Minute where I'll ask Vayu some quick questions, he'll give me some quick answers, it'll be about a minute.
[00:21:01] What kind of things can you build in the lab? You used the word delicious right before the end of the first segment. What kind of delicious things are you imagining coming out of your lab?
[00:21:14] Vayu Hill-Maini: Well, that's a great question, and I think, um, that's where genetics and, and bioengineering can really come in and play a role. You know, I talked about how over centuries, you know, these fungi were domesticated. We changed their DNA, and we sort of specialized them for the uses that we value, cheese, miso, soy sauce, you name it. That took thousands of years, and I think as we think about the future of food and the food system, we don't have thousands of years. It's an urgent challenge, it's 30% of all global emissions, so we need to act now. And with a technology like CRISPR-Cas9, we can make similar modifications or domesticate the fungi in the laboratory now.
[00:21:50] So that's kind of what we're thinking about. One example is, how do we improve flavor? A very simple case there could be sometimes the fungi could make some off flavors. You know, maybe they're a little sour, or maybe they have sort of aromas that people find, you know, okay, but off-putting. By simply knocking out a single gene, you could actually create a clean slate.
[00:22:09] Russ Altman: Wow.
[00:22:09] Vayu Hill-Maini: That's an example.
[00:22:10] Russ Altman: Gotcha.
[00:22:11] Vayu Hill-Maini: Otherwise, we could also imagine enhancing nutrition, trying to get more protein content. So, if the protein content is a limiting factor, how could you increase it to make it higher? Or adding other vitamins and nutrients. For example, improving the content of vitamin A in some of the fungi that we work with to make them really, really boosted super foods. So, I think that, you know, when people hear genetic modification, they might think about, "Oh, I'm gonna take a gene from a frog and put it into a fungus, and it's this alien thing."
[00:22:38] Russ Altman: Right, right.
[00:22:39] Vayu Hill-Maini: I think sometimes it's more about looking at what's already within the genome, in the DNA, and tinkering and sort of modifying it. The way that we have for thousands of years, but now with contemporary tools.
[00:22:50] Russ Altman: Yeah, you said this before, and it struck me that your, your approach is a little bit more, not like come in and change everything, but like little tweaks, little adjustments.
[00:22:59] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:23:00] Russ Altman: Like, maybe one of these small chemicals is slightly unfavorable for the taste profile-
[00:23:05] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly ...
[00:23:05] Russ Altman: And so let's just either reduce it or eliminate it or whatever. Yeah. And so that, that's a very attractive approach because then at the end of the day, when you give the story of what you did to this, it's, it's a nuanced kind of gentle engineering.
[00:23:19] Vayu Hill-Maini: Exactly.
[00:23:20] Russ Altman: Which, uh, my sense is that would sell, and forgive my use of the word sell, that would sell better to the customers who are deciding, do I wanna give this a try?
[00:23:28] Vayu Hill-Maini: And exactly. And then you can think about what can we make with it, you know? We're thinking about nutritionally enhanced mushrooms that are better for you and grow-
[00:23:34] Russ Altman: Yeah
[00:23:34] Vayu Hill-Maini: You know, grow faster and are more economical. We're also taking some of the molds and fermenting, you know, waste from the brewing industry into a delicious new cheese or a burger or a salami.
[00:23:45] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:23:46] Vayu Hill-Maini: So we are discovering also, I think, from the culinary side, what are the new uses, and where does the flavor profile make sense? And how do we then go back into the lab to try to enhance and tinker with it? We call it the DBTL cycle, design, build, taste, learn.
[00:24:02] Russ Altman: Oh.
[00:24:02] Vayu Hill-Maini: Um-
[00:24:03] Russ Altman: I love it ...
[00:24:04] Vayu Hill-Maini: Going back and forth between the kitchen and the lab.
[00:24:06] Russ Altman: So, so even though you're, you're a somewhat accomplished chef, I know that you also host chefs at your lab as part of what you just described, kind of thinking about, like, what needs to be fixed, what needs to... what is possible that we don't have. So tell me about how you bring in chefs.
[00:24:22] Vayu Hill-Maini: I mean, it's just been incredible. Um, you know, this, this year, uh, we've had the pleasure of hosting a chef in residence. You know, people, a lot of people know about artist in residence. You have an artist immersing themselves in an environment. Stanford has a long history of this through the Denning Visiting Artist Program. And we thought, "Could we have a chef?"
[00:24:40] And it was amazing because the Office of the Vice President of the Arts and the Doerr School of Sustainability were really excited and provided funding. And we've had a chef from a two Michelin star restaurant in Spain called Mugaritz in the fall for three weeks and in the spring for three weeks working in our lab.
[00:24:55] Russ Altman: At the university, at the university ...
[00:24:57] Vayu Hill-Maini: in our laboratory-
[00:24:59] Russ Altman: Wow ...
[00:24:59] Vayu Hill-Maini: Talking to the PhD students, post-docs, learning about what's going on, but also teaching our campus about their approach to flavor and creativity. And we've had workshops with the Stanford Farm, we've had public lectures, we've had, you know, pop-up events. And it's been this amazing creative engine, I think, for all of us who appreciate how our fundamental work can have impact in the world-
[00:25:21] Russ Altman: Yes
[00:25:21] Vayu Hill-Maini: And how those perspective can also inform what we do in the first place. I mean, it's, it's been amazing. I've never experienced anything like it.
[00:25:27] Russ Altman: So, so let me ask you about that. I'm sure that you think pretty hard about the kind of chef and the kind of perspective-
[00:25:35] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes ...
[00:25:35] Russ Altman: That they would need to have to really take advantage of this program.
[00:25:39] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes.
[00:25:39] Russ Altman: So what is the profile of, like, the chef that you say, "I need that chef to come here for..." Is it, like, six months or a year or something like that?
[00:25:46] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah, exactly. It's about, you know, a few months, spread over two quarters.
[00:25:51] Russ Altman: So what is the profile of the ideal kind of chef collaborator in residence?
[00:25:56] Vayu Hill-Maini: I mean, I think it's something who's, who... somebody who's curious. Curiosity. You know, we're all driven by curiosity in my lab and, and, you know, among my colleagues. And I think having a chef who says, "You know what? Like, I wanna learn. I wanna..." This might be un- unfamiliar, you know, bioengineering genetics, but, but sort of this open mind to creativity and always being kind of thinking about the boundary of culinary creativity-
[00:26:18] Russ Altman: Yes
[00:26:18] Vayu Hill-Maini: The boundary of knowledge. And Mugaritz, this restaurant in Spain, it's been leading that in the world of food for the last 20-plus years. So, you know, I think you have to be curious.
[00:26:28] I think that's what, that's what's gonna make it the most productive and most inspiring. And as I said, it's been... I mean, just to see the PhD students and, and everybody and the undergrads at Stanford learning about this and engaging with this-
[00:26:39] Russ Altman: Yes ...
[00:26:39] Vayu Hill-Maini: It, it's, it's a, it's a rare voice on campus.
[00:26:42] Russ Altman: It, it sounds fantastic. So actually, let's use that scenario to go back to something you said earlier, which you said maybe there would be a molecule that gives a slightly less desirable.
[00:26:52] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:26:53] Russ Altman: So tell me, maybe even if you can, um, how you discover those molecules 'cause, like, they don't come labeled. The, like, the mushroom doesn't say, "By the way, I have this molecule, and you're not gonna like it."
[00:27:02] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah.
[00:27:03] Russ Altman: Um, but I'm, I'm thinking that you, your chef in residence must have exquisite taste, and I mean that literally.
[00:27:09] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes. Yes.
[00:27:09] Russ Altman: This is, this is a case where I'm talking about literal taste. Um, tell me a story about how you identify some molecule that might not be your favorite. Does that chef in resident bring a special capability there? I imagine that they might-
[00:27:22] Vayu Hill-Maini: It's a great point ... but I don't know. I mean, one of the things we noticed, and this is sort of how working in the kitchen informs the science, right? So I think there's, there's, there's two cases.
[00:27:31] One of them is that we noticed when we grew a particular fungus on some grains, they became really sweet. And, and this is not Something we kind of predicted from DNA sequence alone. We just experienced it. And that led us to go back into the lab to actually discover certain enzymes that help break down, break down plant polymers and create sugars. And so that had led to a new scientific discovery-
[00:27:53] Russ Altman: Wow ...
[00:27:53] Vayu Hill-Maini: For something that's desirable, sweetness. It's awesome. We're writing a paper about it right now with the chefs. The other thing, though, is on the undesirable side, we also discovered that when we grow certain fungi on certain substrates, if they seem to have a lot of fat, you get a pretty strong sort of oxidized fat aroma. The molecule is called octane-3-ol. It's called, it's known as the mushroom alcohol. It's sort of the, the sharp mushroom flavor that some people find off-putting.
[00:28:19] And through sort of looking through the genome and the DNA, we have now identified candidate genes that we think are responsible for this. And again, we discovered it because we tasted it. We noticed this is a sharpness that we don't want all the time, and we developed CRISPR methods to now knock it out, and we'll, we'll have the results in a, in a few weeks, but then we can go back and taste. You know?
[00:28:40] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Vayu Hill-Maini: So I think what people might not appreciate is that it's not just that we start in the lab and we go searching. Sometimes it actually comes to us from our bodies as the instrument, as the machine-
[00:28:51] Russ Altman: Yes ...
[00:28:51] Vayu Hill-Maini: That says, "You know what? This thing keeps propping up all the time. I want more or less of that." It's awesome.
[00:28:58] Russ Altman: I, I love that. Thank you for that story. That is, uh, very inspiring. Uh, we only have a little time left, but I did wanna go to this, uh, at least briefly, to this idea that you also mentioned very early on in our conversation about these fungi spores, molds, they could also be the source of new materials, separate from food, separate from even medicines.
[00:29:16] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yes.
[00:29:16] Russ Altman: But like stuff, um, tell me about what the prospects are, and I know some of this is future, but that's fine. This is The Future of Everything.
[00:29:24] Vayu Hill-Maini: No, this is a really great point, and I mentioned that sort of filamentous fungi, molds and mushrooms we work with, they're filamentous, multicellular, which means that they have structure. That's what you taste when you eat in your, in your, eat these filamentous fungi, like a mushroom.
[00:29:36] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:29:36] Vayu Hill-Maini: It has a bite. It has structure, texture. It also gives them the ability to make materials, leather alternatives, as well as building materials.
[00:29:45] Russ Altman: Wow.
[00:29:45] Vayu Hill-Maini: And we're really excited about this because that's a big source of emissions, you know, textiles and textile manufacturing, for example. And so, how do we leverage these fungi to make new materials? One of the things that we're doing there is we're collaborating between a PhD student in my lab and then a, a faculty member at the design school who's a leading biomaterials designer, a beautiful artist, designer, kind of leading the, leading the way.
[00:30:07] We're thinking about how can we use bioengineering to improve the material properties of the of, of these, of these materials? So we know that the fungi can grow into a textile, but how do we sort of improve that through bioengineering? One of the things we're already starting with is aesthetics. So even if you can make these materials The process of dyeing them or, or, or pigmenting them is really taxing environmentally.
[00:30:29] Russ Altman: Right.
[00:30:29] Vayu Hill-Maini: A lot of the dyes that we use to pigment our clothes like this are terrible for the environment.
[00:30:34] Russ Altman: Right.
[00:30:34] Vayu Hill-Maini: But through the use of bioengineering, we are producing color and pigment in the fungal material, so that you could grow it and you could have patterns, you could have beauty already through those simple tweaks.
[00:30:46] And it's a beautiful connection between the design school and our lab and the bioengineering. I'm really excited. It's early days, but I've already made materials that are black by producing melanin, and it's really cool to see and experience.
[00:30:57] Russ Altman: And black, I've learned from, uh, from my family that black goes with everything.
[00:31:01] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yeah, exactly.
[00:31:03] Russ Altman: Well, that, that's a fantastic way to end. But before we actually end, I wanted to, um, go into our segment that we call Future in a Minute, where I ask-
[00:31:11] Vayu Hill-Maini: Yep
[00:31:11] Russ Altman: You some rapid-fire questions and you give me kinda some short, sweet, as they say, uh, answers. Uh, are you ready to do that?
[00:31:18] Vayu Hill-Maini: Let's go.
[00:31:20] Russ Altman: What is one thing that gives you the most hope for the future?
[00:31:23] Vayu Hill-Maini: I mean, we hear a lot of bleak stories about sustainability and the future of the planet, but what gives me hope is seeing the students at Stanford, the postdocs, the undergrads just believe in something and, and believe that we can do something better and bigger for the future. That is why I show up to work every day.
[00:31:40] Russ Altman: What's one thing you want people to walk away from this episode remembering?
[00:31:45] Vayu Hill-Maini: I think it is this, that although people may associate, in this part of the world, fungi doing a lot of bad stuff, they can do a lot of good stuff, and they're very important for the function of our planet and the future of foods and materials and other things. So kind of remembering that fungi play an important role in our lives and can really help us address challenges for the future.
[00:32:05] Russ Altman: Aside from money, what is the one thing you need to succeed in your research?
[00:32:10] Vayu Hill-Maini: I think that it's to have an amazing group of people that I get to work with every day. It connects to what makes me hopeful. What I need is people who believe and are inspired and, and wanna make a difference to fungi.
[00:32:22] Russ Altman: If all goes well, what does the future look like?
[00:32:25] Vayu Hill-Maini: I think the future looks like we're able to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from the food system and other sectors by harnessing the power of fungi to convert waste into valuable things like foods and materials, that when you go to the store or you buy new clothes, some of that is just gonna be made from fungi.
[00:32:43] Russ Altman: If you were to start over again and you needed to get your certification or degree in a different area, what would that be?
[00:32:50] Vayu Hill-Maini: Well, what not many people might not know is that I'm a assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, but I never studied bioengineering. I studied biology and chemistry and biochemistry. If I would do it all over again, I would do bioengineering because it's an open-minded discipline that has a lot of space for, I think, unusual people like myself to straddle different disciplines and, and, and sort of are always on the boundary of things. So I, if I would do it over again, I would do bioengineering, hopefully in my, in the Stanford department where I'm a professor, because it really embraces, I think- the out of the box thinking that I, that I've experienced in my life.
[00:33:25] Russ Altman: Thanks to Vayu Hill-Maini. That was The Future of Food. Thank you for listening to this show. If you're listening, uh, to us each week, why not press the follow button, get notifications of all the new episodes, and never miss the future of anything.
[00:33:40] Don't forget, we have an amazing archive of old conversations, more than 300, on a wide variety of topics, and y- they're available to you for free at any time. So check them out and enjoy. You can connect with me on many social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. You can also follow me @Rbaltman or @RussBAltman on those platforms. You can also follow the School of Engineering @StanfordSchoolOfEngineering or @StanfordENG.
