Cook’s Science: Synthetic biology is a not a field most people are familiar with. Can you explain, in a nutshell, what you and your colleagues do here at Ginkgo Bioworks?

Christina Agapakis: We’re interested in how to build and make stuff with biology. And it grows in this way that’s inherently sustainable and part of ecosystems. We see biology as a better way to make stuff and we see it impacting a lot of different industries as a result. At Ginkgo, the focus of the company has been on making biology easier to design, easier to engineer, and building a platform on which biological engineers can use biology to build something new.

A lot of our business today is in cultured ingredients, which is the idea that you can genetically engineer yeast to produce [specific molecules or compounds] during the process of fermentation. These are often flavors or fragrances, specialty ingredients, or even nutritional ingredients.

CS: Our team at Cook’s Science and much of the general public, is familiar with yeast and with using bacteria to ferment pickles, beets, sauerkraut, etc. How does that sort of fermentation relate to the fermentation you’re doing at Ginkgo Bioworks?

CA: It’s the same biochemical process . . . the same transformation of sugar into something else by the yeast cells. When you’re talking about beer, that’s yeast taking the sugars from barley or other grains and transforming them into alcohol, carbon dioxide, and all the flavors you get along with the beer. What we do [at Ginkgo Bioworks] is start with that process and say: What enzymes can we take from other plants or other organisms and add them to the yeast [by modifying the yeast’s DNA] so that during fermentation, some of the energy from the sugar is going to create another product as well as the alcohol and carbon dioxide.

One product that’s been made using fermentation for a long time is amino acids, especially amino acids used in animal feed. Those are produced in huge vats on a huge scale; a scale that would not have been possible if you were trying to purify amino acids from proteins from another food source. But there are other kinds of products [made using fermentation], especially in fragrances and cosmetics. There are a lot of compounds present in very small quantities in plants and extracting them has led to a situation where [companies] have farmed or harvested those plants to near-extinction, so now the resource is constrained. Now, [with synthetic biology] there’s the opportunity to be able to synthetically make these compounds at a scale that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

CS: What are some industries or companies you’ve designed microbes for?

CA: We work with companies like Robertet, which is a flavor and fragrance company, on different ingredients. [Editor’s Note: For example, Ginkgo and Robertet are currently working to insert DNA sequences into yeast so they will produce rose scent compounds during fermentation.] During development here in the lab, we do fermentation in about 250-milliliter containers, about the size of a soda can. When a product eventually goes to full, commercial-scale fermentation, it can grow to 50,000 liters in just a couple of days, which shows you what biology can do when the yeast itself acts like the factory that makes these molecules or compounds.

CS: How would you define “synthetic” in the context of what you’re doing at Ginkgo Bioworks? Aren’t yeast technically natural organisms?

CA: That’s a really good question and a really hard question. I think how we define synthetic is so tied up in all of these philosophical and historical narratives and arguments. The organisms we’re working with are pretty close to naturally-occurring yeasts and other microbes but they have been modified. We have added or taken away genes from their genomes. And I think that difference is important . . . The question of how different [are these organisms] and at what point do they cross [the line between natural and synthetic], I  think that’s something people have to decide for themselves.

CS: How do you see synthetic biology intersecting with the culinary world: restaurants, chefs, home cooks, even consumers at the grocery store?

CA: There’s a lot that is happening, or has happened, and a lot that will happen in the future. Many ingredients or enzymes are already produced using fermentation or biotechnology, things that we don’t necessarily know or think about . . . enzymes that are used in cheese production, brewing, baking, or other kinds of preservation or transformation of food, [many of] those are already made using biotechnology. There’s a lot of potential for synthetic biology to improve the efficiency of those enzymes or find new enzymes that will enable new tastes or send things in new directions.

CS: Is there a example of the intersection between synthetic biology and food or cooking that struck you as particularly interesting?

CA: Cheese. You need enzymes to make cheese. An enzyme called chymosin is present in rennet [a complex of enzymes used to coagulate milk in cheesemaking]. Rennet, historically, has come from the stomach lining of calves, but now the majority of rennet used in cheese production comes from genetically modified fungi that are able to produce that enzyme, instead of extracting it from an animal. We’re working on other enzymes that are used in cheese production—for guiding the flavor of different types of cheese—that are also often extracted from animals. So we’re looking at ways of making them [using synthetic biology instead].

CS: So, I have to ask you about the cheese project. How did you come up with the idea to use bacteria cultured from humans to make cheese? What did you hope to learn from the experiment?

CA: About seven years ago, as a graduate student, I was part of a project called Synthetic Aesthetics, which paired synthetic biologists with artists to explore the potential connections between science and technology, and art and design. My partner was Sissel Tolaas, an odor researcher based in Berlin . . . her work is about perceiving smells in different ways and being aware of how our prejudices and emotions dictate whether we say a smell is good or bad. I was working on microbes and synthetic biology and was particularly interested in microbial communities. There are microbial communities on [human skin] that make body odors—that’s where [those odors] come from. So we started asking what are those microbes, what are the chemicals they produce, and what can we learn about them. And as we started to do that research, looking for papers on the species of bacteria [found on human skin], everything was turning up cheese. And then we realized, oh wow, there’s a connection: There’s a cheese that smells like feet!

We started digging into what people already know about this connection . . . and then at one point we said, “well, let’s just make some cheese [using bacteria cultured from people] and see what happens.” It gets a very visceral reaction, because it does feel wrong, I think, to have the bacteria go from your feet to your food. That was a feeling we wanted to explore and challenge. We wanted to ask, if we do domesticate bacteria more, if people are using microbes in their home cooking more and more . . . how is that going to change our relationship to them? How is it going to change our relationship with our own bodies and the bacteria there? Will we still draw these kinds of boundaries around ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria, or will those shift, too? [Editor’s Note: I know you’re curious . . . Agapakis only sampled the cheese cultured from her own bacteria.]

CS: Tell us about your role as creative director at Ginkgo Bioworks. That’s not a title we often associate with biotechnology companies.

CA: Creative teams at technology companies [like Ginkgo Bioworks] are really thinking about the edge between science and technology and the world. How do you communicate the news stories to the general public? How do you package the stories? How do you create products that are going to make sense in the real world?

CS: Do you have a favorite microbe?

CA: [Laughing] I love them all equally. There are some bacteria that make these really gorgeous patterns as they grow [on cultured media]. It’s called Paenibacillus vortex—they make these just outrageous patterns as they spread over Petri dishes, it’s really beautiful. There’s also a [genus of] photosynthetic bacteria called Anaebena, which can do a lot of really interesting things. [They’re] also kind of multicellular in that they make these really long filaments of cells. I love bacteria that blur the boundary between single cellular and multicellular . . . when bacteria have multicellularity and these complex relationships with each other, I think it’s really beautiful.

CS: Where do you see the field of synthetic biology heading in the next 5-10 years? What kinds of products might we be eating, wearing, or using that were developed using genetically modified microbes?

CA: I think we’ll start to see new materials. [For example], there’s a company called Bolt Threads that’s producing spider silk using yeast. I think we’ll also see new flavors and new enzymes making an impact along the supply chain. I also hope to see new questions being asked about how synthetic biology can affect the culinary world or people who are trying to ferment things at home. It’s fun to think about what a chef or a home pickler would do with a specific microbe, where would they take it? This is an important element to my role . . . I think the future emerges from how people interact [with the technology] . . . using their creativity and intuition for food or flavor to take it in a new direction. There is the potential to ask: What microbes are there? How can we control them differently to add new dimensions to flavor? And then the sky’s the limit because anything can be fermented.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Photography by Kevin White.

It was lean—made just from muscle—with added beet juice for color. While the texture was slightly below the mark, the price point was way above it, coming in at $325,000 to create the one and only such patty.

This year, Dr. Post proclaimed that, as soon as 2020, customers will be able to buy lab-grown burgers for $10 apiece.

The idea of eating lab-grown meat is still hard to wrap one’s head around. But it’s an intriguing one, particularly in light of inhumane treatment of livestock, cattle producing greenhouse gases linked to global warming, and the world’s growing population leading to food insecurity. Dr. Post recently spoke to Cook’s Science about the project.

Cook’s Science: What is the current timeline and price for the cultured burger?

Dr. Mark Post: In the face of what we still need to do—scale up, get regulatory approval, change some of the production system—in 3-4 years, it’s going to be about $10 for a hamburger. I was a little bit conservative in 2013, but in the back of my mind I thought it was not going to be 10 years, but more like 5.

CS: What might slow you down?

MP: Scaling up. It’s completely new technology. The systems that allow us to scale up are already there, but they’ve never been used for these types of cells or this type of production. The process consists of two phases. One is cell production. The technology is very similar to when you do this for bacteria or yeast: it’s a fermenting process. In this case, the products from the cells aren’t the product; the cells are the product.

The second phase is more tissue formation: you allow the cells to make tissues, and that requires automation, replacing mechanical handling [by humans with] robots. It will look a bit like a pipetting robot and automate transfer of the tissue to a maturation module, and from there [it will be] automatically harvested.

CS: Where are the stem cells coming from? Can they be taken from any muscle tissue of the cow?

MP: They come from an adult cow. It doesn’t matter [what part of the body they come from] in terms of efficiency. Whether it matters in terms of taste or structure of the muscle fibers, we don’t know that yet.

CS: What is the current timeline from stem cell to edible meat?

MP: It’s more [about] capacity. It takes 3 months to grow 1 hamburger. Because every cell doubling takes approximately 1 day, then it takes 3 months and a day to grow 2 hamburgers, and 3 months plus 2 days to grow 4 hamburgers. It’s an exponential process. I also say 3 months, because now we grow fat tissue [separately, for added flavor and texture], and fat tissue takes a little longer than muscle tissue.

CS: The 2013 cultured burger was made with an animal-derived growth medium, fetal bovine serum, that provided nutrients to the cells. Will the burger that comes to market be made totally without animal inputs?

MP: The two components you require for tissue formation are feed for the cells: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, sugars, that sort of thing. And then, there is also a blood component to make the cells happy. That, we want to get rid of. We have achieved cell cultures in the absence of serum [one component of blood], so it can be done, but it’s not quite as efficient yet. We want to [try using photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria] not only as a source for amino acids and sugars, but perhaps also as a source to replace serum.

CS: While the cells absorb their nutrients, they need to grow into three-dimensional meat. What kind of scaffolding is used to allow them to do that?

MP: This process for a hamburger relies on self-organization of the cells. Meaning, we put them in a soft gel and let them find each other, align, start to attach to each other, start to contract, and start to produce a fiber. The cells bind to components of the gel and start to ‘contract’ the gel, so that the cells come close until they are attaching to each other, thus forming a tissue. The gel we are currently using is what we call a functionalized alginate, with small peptides [amino acid chains] the cell can attach to.

CS: Is the muscle being exercised while it grows?

MP: They already exercise themselves. It’s kind of weird to see—but [the fibers] start contracting even if there is no particular reason and no one is telling them that they should. We are still thinking of some level of [exercise] to speed up the process of cell maturation.

CS: In 2013, you added beet juice to make the burger more red. Is that still happening?

The color of meat comes from a protein called myoglobin: it turns red in the presence of oxygen and it turns blue in the absence of oxygen. When we were culturing our cells in a conventional way—they were exposed to the regular air that we are breathing—they don’t express this protein very much, so that makes the cells yellow. We have not looked into the mechanism, but there are many signalling pathways in the cell that respond to oxygen levels. So what we started to do is culture our cells under lower oxygen conditions, and they start to express this myoglobin. And they turn nicely pink. It’s a pretty simple intervention that can now make cells that have their natural color, and the natural nutritional value of heme iron.

CS: Do you know when the next burger tasting will be?

MP: I hope it’s going to be in the next year and a half, a scientific tasting with a panel and blind tasting.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photography by David Parry/PA

Cook’s Science: Tell us about your restaurant. What was the biggest challenge when you opened almost 10 years ago?

Ángel León: [I opened Aponiente] to have a place to tell my story through the kitchen. We do more than just serve food. We had to find a way to talk about the sea in a different way.

[The very beginning] was a hard time, because nobody understood why I cooked the fish that nobody wanted to eat. People thought, This chef is serving me the fish that nobody wants, instead of serving me prawns or lobster. For many years we’ve been persisting, despite what most people wanted to be served. We’ve been lucky that people have become sensitive to our work and value what we do.

We utilize fish that are usually discarded, such as bleak, krill, Atlantic mackerel, and moray eel. Because they’re not well known, there’s no demand for them. We reinvent those fish and turn them into, for example, something similar to embutido, or cured meat.

And we’re just starting. There’s still so much to tell, to learn, to evolve. We have to continue reinventing the sea.

CS: It’s been said by visitors that your kitchen resembles a laboratory.

AL: We’re not a laboratory exactly. We’re a group of people trying to find new ingredients in the sea. Our laboratory is nature. We try to open people’s minds so they realize that in the sea, there’s a lot more to consume than what we usually think. And, of course, our team does a lot of investigation, but we’re focused on finding new ingredients.

CS: What’s a new ingredient you discovered?

AL: Marine plankton [technically called phytoplankton] for human consumption. Plankton [which adds a marine saltiness and silkiness to León’s dishes, such as risotto] is one of the principal ingredients at Aponiente, and one of the projects I’m most proud of. To turn plankton into an ingredient that people could consume, we worked hand in hand with the company Fitoplancton Marino, which grows marine microalgae [for the purpose of aquaculture and cosmetics, as well as human nutrition]. They have a spectacular laboratory. The plankton just needs light, water, and the right temperature for photosynthesis. Plankton has 50 times more omega-3s than olive oil. It’s a product with a lot of natural properties unique in the world.

CS: What interested you in bioluminescence, which is also part of your work with plankton?

AL: I saw the light when I went fishing at night. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to tell the world about it, so that people could see the same light that I saw and know that nature still has the capacity to surprise us in the 21st century.

We’ve turned into reality the dream of eating light through plankton. The plankton produces light; [we combine it with] crab that we’ve dried. When we mix them with water or a broth, we get the sea light. The most important and difficult part was to create a dry product that still makes light. We’re going to start using it [at Aponiente] this season.

CS: You also partnered with three Spanish universities to study how different fishing methods can affect the texture and flavor of fish. What did you find out?

AL: We studied how the texture of the fish was affected by the way we caught it and how it died. We looked at three fishing methods: anzuelo (with a fish hook), palangre (longline), and red (net). Fish is water. Fish that’s caught with a hook and killed in frozen water, ice, or snow is the best fish to cook. The more water the fish loses, the less interesting it is in the kitchen. If the fish dies from a cold shock, it creates the most interesting texture. With a net, a lot of time passes between when the fish dies and when you freeze it. Unfortunately, there’s less hook fishing, which is the most sustainable fishing because you collect the fish one by one.

CS: You’ve said there’s still a lot you need to learn about the sea. What do you hope to learn?

AL: Everything. We only consume 25 percent of the biomass in the sea. That explains how much I still have to learn and discover, and then serve on a plate.

This interview was conducted in Spanish and has been edited and condensed.

Photography by Alvaro Fernandez-Prieto courtesy of Ángel León.

Cook’s Science: Can you describe the moment that the idea for this invention came to you?

Mark Oleynik: It’s not a one-minute idea, it’s a process. You see a problem and you find the optimal way to solve it. First, you need to understand what’s the service you want to have in the future. If you wake up 100 years [from now], what would you like to see around you? [My] main expectation is to have any kind of dish immediately when you want it.

CS: How does the robot learn to cook?

MO: We are tracking the motion of the chefs. [Ed note: One of the first recipes they recorded—crab bisque—was with Chef Tim Anderson; they are developing their software library of recipes with different chefs]. There are cyber gloves, motion capture cameras with markers, the video recognition. We use many technologies to make high-precision identification of each motion of the chef.

CS: And the robot moves in real time?

MO: One part of the motion capture is to keep timing the same as the chef. To build the identical dish, you need to have the same initial conditions and same process. [The system comes with special containers for ingredients, which the robot can recognize.]

CS: The recipes that the robot comes with are pre-programmed. Would the owner be able to teach the robot new recipes?

MO: Initially, the recipes are coming from the lab. We need to prove they work perfectly. You need to have enough expertise for that. But we will integrate some self-learning algorithms.

CS: The Moley comes fully stocked with appliances and tools. What about groceries?

MO: When you choose a recipe, there is a database inside. All the ingredients are well-defined and [with the correct] quantities. Users don’t need to make their own list. When you choose the recipe, you can place the order for the ingredients [online], depending on the logistic chain.

CS: Do you like to cook?

MO: Maybe, sometimes, but unfortunately, I’m not talented in this area.

CS: What recipes have you tried that you liked a lot?

MO: It’s confidential—we are preparing the launch for [2018], and will present all the recipes then.

CS: For many people, cooking is an expression of affection. Have you found any resistance to the idea of a robot creating a home-cooked meal?

MO: Are you sure that everyday you make food with love? There is no limitation to the Moley kitchen. You can use it as a normal kitchen anytime you want. In case you don’t have time, you can use the robotic mode.

CS: Now to the last and most important question—who is doing the dishes?

MO: Actually, we are going to integrate a dishwasher. The robot can place the dishes inside and press the buttons.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photographs courtesy of Moley Robotic Kitchen.

Cook’s Science: Tell us about your work. What is the Open Agriculture Initiative?

Caleb Harper: [Open Agriculture is] a big initiative, and there are a lot of problems in food. I think our work will address many of them, but the biggest problem I see us solving is creating a next generation of farmers. A lot of our focus is on developing tools…which we call Food Computers as a general category. We have the Personal Food Computer, which we open-sourced six months ago and now has been built in 20 countries on 6 continents. These Personal Food Computers don’t grow a whole lot of food. [They’re] not about that. They’re about growing intelligence, growing skills, growing knowledge, especially [when they are used in schools]. They help teach about chemistry and biology, but also about data science and sensor science and electronics and coding. It’s been really successful in a lot of schools.

The next size up from the Personal Food Computer is what we call a Food Server, which is the size of a shipping container. Our last tool is the Food Data Center, which is the scale of a warehouse. This gets into real [food] production. But the cool thing is what links all three of these tools —the data we collect. We collect climate data that will tell us how that climate [within the Food Computer] will cause that plant to express [its genome]. So, the natural climate in Mexico, or the climate in Napa, or Bordeaux, or any other Food Computer climates we want to experiment with, they are the generators of flavor, color, texture, and size. And so, as kids, adults, scientists are doing experiments with Food Computers, they’re generating climate data. The technology between the three types of Food Computers is a bit different, but the data they produce, which we call ‘Open Phenome [Library],’ is really a sort of crowd-sourced science project.

CS: What problems are you and your team working to solve?

CH: I think probably one of the biggest problems is that people don’t really know a lot about food. General, normal people haven’t had to be involved in food in a long time. My ancestors came over during the land rush and were farmers but they left at some point because farms started to aggregate, and you started to have very big farms in the United States. That’s resulted in 2% of our population being farmers and their average age being 58. Think about that. A whole, important group of people, and this is pretty consistent around the world, is almost in their 60s. So, who’s the next generation of farmers? I think it’s going to be kids who are interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and STEAM. They’re going to be scientists who apply out-of-field knowledge [to agriculture]. Agricultural research has gone very deep but very narrow for a long time. And now I think we’re going to expand it across a bunch of different fields.

CS: It sounds like providing open-source material for making the Food Computers, and open-sourcing the data they collect, is a key part of your work. Why is this so important to you?

CH: There [are a] lot of people doing what I’m doing, in a way. You’ll see shipping container farms, you’ll see warehouse farms, you’ll see tiny farms in apartments, and I think that’s awesome. But the biggest thing I thought was missing was that everyone’s designing their own little solution and then they’re putting a patent on it. I was watching this happen, I visited all of them. I realized that informational transparency was necessary for this to do any good for the world. I want everyone to be able to tinker around with [Food Computers] and come up with new solutions because it’s the beginning, it’s not such an evolved field. And then I realized that even somewhat more than the machines, the data is also really important. Once I figured that out, I just started putting climate recipes in the public domain because I don’t want to see a day when climate recipes are patented, because there’s so much to learn. We have all this new technology like [Artificial Intelligence] and machine learning and computer vision. What people don’t talk about is that it takes massive data sets to use that stuff. You need trillions of data points. In this category we’re working on there are literally no working data sets. So how are we going to get some of the smartest people in the world to help us with the future of food if there’s no open data for anybody? And that became a really big lightbulb—I said I have to build the world’s biggest data sets for the future of farming so they can be used by smarter people than me, by algorithm folks, by chefs, so it has to be open. There’s no way I think this will be successful if it follows the very traditional agriculture model of closed source intellectual property.

CS: You mentioned chefs. How do you see your work interacting with chefs and restaurants?

CH: If you can imagine using Food Computers to grow ancient seeds, rare seeds, heirloom seeds . . . we grew some tomatoes in the lab that hadn’t been grown in 150 years. I think this can give a chef access to be really creative with things that aren’t available at their local level.

The other thing is approaching food like wine making. Wine makers will [deprive] the vineyard of water at a certain time to increase sugar production in the grapes, they’ll do all kinds of microclimate adjustments to achieve that 100-point wine. I think we’re going to see the same thing for food. Like a tomato that has that amazing, robust, ‘Tuscany in the summertime on the north slope’ taste, but is grown in Detroit [in a Food Computer]. It’s a lot about flavor. It’s about getting [chefs] access to things they haven’t had before. And I think a lot of chefs right now want to know about farming.

CS: So what’s next for you and your team?

CH: So much cool stuff. We just released version 2.0 of the Food Computer at the White House a few weeks ago. We are in full mode of developing that and making it better and getting it out to schools. I think 2017 will see hundreds of Food Computers in schools across the world. We have a project with the World Food Program where we’re bringing some [Food Computers] to refugee camps. We have our new lab [in Middleton, Massachusetts]. We’re going to do some ancient and rare genetics in there. We will be launching our not-for-profit, which at its core, is like a trust for the data, for the software and the hardware.

CS: What would you share with our readers who might be interested in getting involved with food computers and the future of farming?

CH: I would say, if you’re interested, join the forum, think about building a food computer, or think about funding one for a school and giving it as a gift, especially if you’re a parent.

The more “nerd farmers” we have, the better. If you want to grow [plants] and you have a hard time growing, use [the open-source Food Computer and climate recipes]. And when you grow, your data will be useful to someone else and you’ll be able to get data back. Once you get into this little “nerd farmer” community, amazing things start to happen. There are lots of questions and it’s early days, but it’s a really fun time to get involved because there aren’t many people who are that much better than anyone else. So, we’re going to explore and we’re going to have fun. But eventually that data will be used to grow food in cities in the future. I think that’s the legacy of the project.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Photos courtesy of Open Agriculture Initiative, MIT Media Lab.

Cook’s Science: How did you get inspired to research food and how we decide to eat?

Dr. Brian Wansink: I grew up in the least cool place to grow up—Iowa. There were lots of farms, and I sold vegetables door to door. As a little boy, I always found it interesting that one house would buy everything I had in my little wagon. The house next door—which was identical in all ways—would look at me like I was selling kryptonite. Your smartest friend that can answer every question you could ask can’t answer why they ate what they ate today. We really can’t explain most of why we do what we do. The things around us are what nudge us into doing things. Our research found that the typical person thinks they make 25 to 30 decisions a day about food. But in reality, we make over 200 decisions every day.

CS: What’s the most common misconception about food and psychology?

BW: First, that we are the master and commander of all our food decisions, and second, that we know what we like. We found that labeling something as a “succulent Italian fillet” rather than a “fish stick” makes an incredible difference. Participants rate the food as better, even if they ate the exact same thing.

CS: What do you think has been one of your more successful findings that has changed the way people eat?

BW: Insistence on wanting to believe that we’re smarter than a plate or a bowl, and that we’re [in control] of every one of our decisions has [had] the biggest influence. It’s been what’s led to the adoption of a ton of our stuff. While the majority of people we’ve done studies on accept that there are external factors leading to their food choices, findings show that around 4 percent of our subjects still refuse to acknowledge that whatever influenced them actually has influence on them. If we show, for instance, they serve themselves 22 percent less food because they had a 9½-inch plate instead of an 11-inch plate, they’ll just say they weren’t as hungry.

When you realize that most of the people who you want to influence—family members, kids—are not going to acknowledge they have a problem, it makes it easier to implement design. In terms of specifics, we designed the 100-calorie pack, and I introduced it to Nabisco and Mars and Kellogg’s. People thought it was stupid, saying, “We’re in the business of selling more food, not less food.” I argued, “You’re in the business to make money, you can make more money selling less food.” Once that got traction, it really moved.

CS: What do you think the effects are of photographing your food?

BW: Day-to-day life really isn’t that exciting and taking a photo of a meal makes it more eventful. Whether a person decides to post it on their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, it ends up doing a similar thing to what was done 500 years ago. We recently did this article where we looked at paintings over the last 500 years. The point of that was there are a lot of public health critics that criticize this obsession with our food culture and people worshipping the food on their plates, that it’s the sign of the decline of civilization. Our research suggested that back then, people were painting ridiculous things that were almost impossible for them to find or eat. Fifty-one percent of the paintings in the Netherlands had lemons in [them]. Lemon trees were a long ways away from the Netherlands. Thirty percent of the paintings in Germany had lobster and shellfish. Less than 1 percent of Germany’s [landmass] is coastline. The extreme view that we portray something aspirational or more exciting than your typical meal is something that follows for a long, long time, and is no more the decline of Western civilization today than it was in Rembrandt’s time.

CS: What do you think the next generation will be eating that we’re not eating today?

BW: I think what’s going to happen in the future is people are going to feel more in control of what they’re eating. Cooking isn’t dying. Maybe it’s going to be more restaurants where you build your own meal, or more of these assemble at home sort of things like Blue Apron. But I think there is going to be a regression toward people believing they have more control over their food environment. Many people don’t think they can cook, but they don’t realize they are 10 dinners away from being a competent cook.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photography courtesy of the Food and Brand Lab.

Cook’s Science: Tell me a little about yourself. What made you decide to get your Ph.D.?

Esther Miller: I took a little more of a circuitous route than most graduate students—I was a high school teacher for a few years. And then I worked in a really cool biotech company, which was making genetically modified mosquitoes, but I wanted to be more of a scientist than a regulator so I went back to university and found this lab. My first impression was, wow, “this is food AND science.”

CS: Why microbial ecology?

EM: I think microbial ecology is a cool topic because microbes are everywhere and how they interact can be used as a model for how animals interact and how ecosystems interact—but you can study it in the lab [as opposed to out in the field] and it’s a lot quicker and easier. I think the work we do in this lab is also relevant to the public; it’s relevant for consumers and for people who are doing fermentation, rather then just doing microbial ecology on a Petri dish with two species that you’re not likely to encounter [in the real world]—that seems too abstract.

CS: Tell us about your current research.

EM: I’m looking at how microbes come together in communities on the leaves of cabbages and then studying the function of those communities—how communities [of microbes] can produce a ferment. For example, it’s the bacteria on the leaf of a cabbage that create sauerkraut—they’re an important component, they have to be there.

CS: What are some experiments that you’re doing to understand these microbe communities?

EM: I grew cabbages at three different sites, brought them back to the lab, and then I fermented them and looked at how the pH changed during fermentation. As a ferment progresses, it gets more and more acidic, and that’s a function of the lactic acid bacteria that cause the ferment. So, the faster it ferments, or the lower the pH it reaches—it’s showing that the function of that microbe community is better.

CS: What’s with the (adorable) cabbages in the little boxes?

EM: Normally, microbial ecologists work on Petri dishes with agar plates, but that wouldn’t work with my system. It wouldn’t represent how the plant is interacting with the microbes as well. By sterilizing the seeds of the cabbage plant and putting them in the tiny boxes, I can create a totally sterile cabbage with no microbes on it. Then I can add microbes to the plant and see how they interact with one another.

CS: If I were to examine one of your cabbage leaves under a microscope, what would I see?

EM: So, anything above the ground on the plant, which is covered in microbes, is called the phyllosphere—the biosphere is all living things on the earth, the phyllosphere includes all living things on the surface of the plant. That could include yeast, it could be plant pathogens that can cause the leaf to break down or rot, it could be bacteria that improve the health of the plant by competing with pathogens, it could be tiny single-cell organisms living and interacting with the plant—there’s a whole tiny microscopic world.

CS: What do you hope to learn from this research? How do you hope your findings will be applied to food systems or even food consumers like us?

EM: In some of my pilot studies, I learned that if you plant cabbages at different sites, you end of up with different lactic acid bacteria. So if you’re a sauerkraut producer and you use cabbages from one farm and then compared your sauerkraut to cabbages from a second farm, you might have a different end product. Really understanding what bacteria are present and how they’re getting onto the cabbage could help provide consistency in end products or help growers or sauerkraut producers understand the bacteria and can ensure that there are sufficient lactic acid bacteria to ferment the cabbage.

CS: What tips would you give our readers who are interested in making their own sauerkraut, kimchi, or other fermented goodies at home?

EM: I think the best thing is to just go and do it. I think a lot of people spend time reading about it or worrying about it, but I think you should just go buy a cabbage and do it. If you make sure that your ferment is anaerobic, or completely submerged [in the brine], it shouldn’t have pathogens growing in it at all. If it’s not completely submerged just top it off with a bit of water, or preferably brine, but just make sure that it’s underwater. Just do it is the best tip.

CS: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done in the name of science?

EM: When I was an undergrad, I tickled the legs of locusts for five seconds every minute for eight hours.

CS: What!? Why?

EM: If you agitate their legs, they start swarming. Locusts are normally solitary but if they’re agitated they start to swarm.

CS: What does one use to tickle the legs of a locust?

EM: A little paintbrush, like one you would paint a model plane with.

CS: Wow. That’s a great answer to that question. What’s next for you?

EM: I want to plant the cabbages out in the field and work with farmers and producers. I want to think about ways that you could support plants by adding microbes; how microbes can improve the growth of plants.

CS: I heard that you’re also starting to explore how herbivores, like caterpillars, affect the microbiomes of plant leaves. Tell us about that.

EM: When an herbivore, such as a caterpillar, bites the leaf, the plant responds to that herbivore by producing a chemical defense. These chemicals that the herbivore induces in the plant will possibly alter the microbes that live on the surface of the plant. Herbivory and microbes on the plant can have antagonistic effects—if there are microbes living on the surface of the leaf, they can influence how the plant responds to herbivores and vice versa. I want to try adding herbivores to the cabbages and then add microbes and see how the population of microbes changes on the leaf with the addition of the herbivore. This is true ecology though and it’s going to be seasonal, so I have to wait for more caterpillars to come round.

CS: We’ll have to check back next spring and see what you find. Until then, we need to find a reason to crash your lab meeting with the cheese.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Photography by Kevin White