The Real Vegan Cheese team has kept steadily working on this project, and we have some great updates for you!
A lot of things have happened since our last note to you. The team has been meeting bi-monthly for 4 years with over 270 participants who have contributed their time as a volunteers to the project. We have now reached the point where we have successfully produced all four of the casein proteins found in cheese, and we have even started putting them together into experimental mini-cheeselets!
Here's some more detailed progress updates since our last update:
We did a good amount of work pursuing casein expression in Uracil auxotrophic yeast strains (which should also allows negative selection) but that approach seemed rather unreliable in our hands.
In 2016, our science team led by Rachel and Craig managed to get first preliminary results on kappa casein expression in the yeast Pichia pastoris, the key protein necessary to make cheese, and the one that had given us the most trouble before.
We acquired several cheese ripening bacterial strains, and started culturing them on vegan media to make it easier for any vegan cheese maker (even those using nut and plant based proteins) to ripen their cheeses with authentic strains.
This past year we had grant funding from the Tarshis Foundation to continue the research on the expression and purification of the caseins protein, supporting two of our PhD research scientists part time for nine months. During this time, our scientific leads Julianne and Yann developed the expression of the four caseins in E.coli and managed to purified two caseins successfully (Alpha S1 and Beta caseins). One of our team members in LA also combined our partially purified Kappa casein with the other three caseins purified from milk-derived casein powder, to produce our very first mini-cheeselet!
No progress yet on Narwhal cheese - we are still waiting for the Narwhal genome to be published so that we can pull out the genes which create milk proteins. Meanwhile, the team at Biocurious has pivoted to work on goat casein proteins.
We had a discussion with the FDA about the project and they let us know the pathway to regulation of bovine based proteins, however they gave us a red light on working with human proteins.
We continue to work on this project to create open source technology to make cheese. Now that we have achieved making the cheese proteins we can finally send out the “BioHacker Special” rewards, which will come with a Project Participation Agreement, an open licensing agreement for using these protein plasmids. We will also be contacting the folks who supported us at the “Plasmid Named After You” level. We *think* we’ve sent out all of our other backer awards, but please do contact us if you fell between the cracks!
We have continued to receive media attention. Here are a few highlights:
Wired - Cow Milk Without the Cow Is Coming to Change Food Forever - April 2015
Real Vegan Cheese and the Artistic Critique of Biotechnology - article by our very own Rebecca Wilbanks, 2017
Gastropod podcast - Who faked my cheese? - April 2018
Oh and hey - Its Giving Tuesday! Please consider making another donation to help us continue development of the vegan cheese into a real product, and spread the word. Your funding and the generous funding from the Tarshis Foundation have kept this project on track for 4 years but we need additional funding to meet the next level of milestones. Please support us at https://realvegancheese.org/donate