Generations ago, sauerkraut, beer, wine, kimchi and yogurt all came into being because microbial cultures made their way into food items and transformed them.
Put another way, these fermented foods were all the results of accidents. Good accidents — but accidents just the same.
Kendall Dabaghi, co-founder and CEO of New York-based Kingdom Supercultures, said his company is doing much the same thing in a very different way through technology.
"Instead of taking another thousand years to randomly stumble upon the collection of microorganisms that will turn oat and coconut into a really compelling plant-based yogurt, we can speed through these combinations and start to span that really complex design space very quickly in the lab using computation and different experimental approaches," Dabaghi said. "Ultimately, what we're doing is really just speeding up these natural serendipitous discoveries."
达巴吉（Dabaghi）去年与他的哥伦比亚大学同学拉维·谢斯（Ravi Sheth）一起开始的王国超级文化，隔离了发酵食品的微生物培养物，然后将它们重新组装成“超级培养”，可以做很多事情：创建一个更好的植物性酸奶或更少陶醉的酒精饮料，或减少添加的糖。
担任该公司首席科学官的什间说，他认为王国超级文化的布鲁克林实验室是“威利·旺卡（Willy Wonka）的天然食品工厂”。
Sheth说：“我们能够利用这些微生物来真正，真正的神奇的事情，并将基础转变为全新的东西。”“ [我们]生产的天然产品和基于人造化学产品一样的性能，可以访问和味道，在许多情况下可能从未品尝过或以前都不喜欢。”
虽然王国超级文化在雷达下主要运营，但投资者和大型制造商仍在注意。该公司今天宣布$25 million Series A funding roundled by Shine Capital. Other funders in the round include Valor, Tao, Lux, Salt, Reference and Digitalis, and the company received personal investments from the founders of Daring Foods, Good Culture, Hungryroot, RXBar and Waterloo. Kingdom Supercultures plans to use these funds to expand R&D. Last month, Kingdom Supercultures将其实验室移至更大的空间。
“我们能够利用这些微生物do really, really magical things and take bases and transform them into something entirely new. [We] make natural products that perform just as well as artificial chemical-based products, that access tastes and flavors that in many cases may not have ever been tasted or understood before."
Ravi Sheth
Co-founder and chief scientific officer, Kingdom Supercultures
Sheth and Dabaghi could not disclose many specifics about the companies they are working with, but Kingdom Supercultures did提供一些文化for the unique fermented components on thenew all-vegan menuat exclusive New York restaurant Eleven Madison Park. Dabaghi said they are currently working with some of the largest CPG companies on several projects, including the plant-based dairy and alcoholic beverage spaces. But, Sheth said, that's only the beginning.
"The vision is much, much larger than that, and we think that these ingredients will be a core part of the products that we interact with every day," Sheth said. "Many of those are yet to be invented, but we can only dream of what that will look like."
Using microorganisms like Lego blocks
王国超级文化确实在科学上很复杂，但易于解释。
It identifies and isolates microorganisms. And then, with an end product or result in mind, it assembles those microorganisms into "supercultures" to produce it. Sheth said the process works somewhat like Legos.
他说：“因此，对我们来说，我们的个体乐高积木是这些单独的文化，然后我们可以将它们组装成非常有意，高性能的成分。”“……实际上，这种新方法只有在过去五年左右的时间里才有可能，在我们的脑海中，这确实代表了我们对天然成分和基于发酵过程的看法的一步变化。”
Sheth and Dabaghi stressed that their process is non-GMO and involves absolutely no bioengineering. They aren't changing the cultures that exist. Instead, they're combining them to get better, more customized results.
王国的一部分表rcultures' process is using custom analytical equipment that takes precise measurements of each microorganism — its effects on taste, texture and health benefits of different base ingredients. The company uses machine learning and a computational algorithm to help it design supercultures with the desired functionality.
Dabaghi says he sees businesses like Kingdom Supercultures, which use science and biology to create a new class of all-natural ingredients, as the future of food.
"Petroleum-based chemical ingredients revolutionized the consumer packaged goods industry in the 20th century," he said. "We believe the 21st century is going to be the century of biology, where we can use the natural microbial communities to completely transform the way that we eat and live."
达巴吉（Dabaghi）开始了他的职业生涯，共同创立了网络安全平台Armorhub和积极的在线社交参与平台A加。但是他总是有食物过敏，自身免疫性疾病和消化问题。发酵食品是唯一可以改善症状的东西，因此他对其健康潜力感兴趣。他成为哥伦比亚的一名微生物组研究员，在那里他遇到了什斯。
Sheth的职业生涯大部分时间都致力于微生物组研究，并有望成为一名教授。当他度过一个夏天与Bill＆Melinda Gates Foundation的营养不良问题时，他的职业道路发生了变化。在那里，他致力于通过健康食品解决全球营养不良的方法，这使他对文化和发酵的实际营养方面感到兴奋。
The duo started their business last year with a grant from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research program. They unveiled their fermented sauce platform — in use at Eleven Madison Park — in April 2020. And they officially launched at seed acceleratorY Combinator's summer 2020 Demo Day。
More demand, more impact on the way
王国超级文化刚刚起步，大多数消费者都没有经历过company's products. But Dabaghi said that it is structuring so that they will be in consumer products someday. The company plans to be exclusively an ingredients supplier. Its expertise is in the science of working with cultures, he said, not in building products, marketing and distribution.
他说：“在目前作为成分供应商的化身中，我们可以在植物性的酸奶和奶酪，酒精饮料，植物蛋白，个人护理，美容上工作。”“我们可以在许多不同领域工作，我们相信我们仍然刚刚起步。”
该公司正在处理的一种成分称为君主超级文化，特别是为康普茶制造的。达巴吉说，虽然许多人喜欢发酵茶的健康益处，但为了使其既美味又功能，它通常需要大量的糖和精心的冷藏。它还含有酒精。君主超级文化使康普茶具有相同的健康益处，但没有糖或酒精，而且货架稳定。它还消除了发酵茶倾向于拥有的些许鲜艳，鲜明的味道，使康普茶（Kombucha）赋予了达巴吉（Dabaghi）所说的泡腾和淡淡的味道，更像是塞尔特（Seltzer）。他说，该公司正在与康普茶制造商交谈，很快就应该在货架上有产品。
Kingdom Supercultures' new lab, which is a massive size upgrade from its previous location, and the new funds will give the business the boost it needs right now, Sheth said. Its program has gained traction with many manufacturers, he said.
"Right now, we literally cannot build the lab in capacities fast enough to meet demand from many of our partners," Sheth said. "I think what our customers see in what we're doing is this vision and this exciting technology, able to deliver natural precision, high-performance ingredients that clean up the labels of products, that deliver really amazing consumer experiences. That's something that just cannot be accomplished with other technologies on the market in a clean, natural way."
