Indispensable to the production of fermented foods that are basic to Japanese cuisine, koji mold is called “kokkin” (literally, “the national fungus”). In the Muromachi Period (1336-1573 ...

Prime Roots products are made of koji, the fungi that make soy sauce delicious. Koji is eerily fast-growing, which means a smaller carbon footprint, if you care about that sort of thing.

“We thought about the potential of fungi and how it can be unlocked by tinkering with what was already there [in the genome],” said Hill-Maini. Hill-Maini used A. oryzae, commonly known as koji mold, ...