At a Technical University of Denmark lab, researchers are exploring the potential for fungi to be used as meat and seafood replacements.
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00:00This is our fungal lab which we use to do our experiments and one of the experiments
00:19we did is actually look at the genomic data of our strain.
00:23So we use DNA to actually decode our fungi.
00:27So you can see DNA maybe as a sort of a book of instructions that the fungi use to kind
00:32of grow and exist and metabolize and create flavors and textures as well.
00:39And by comparing the DNA of different types of fungi, we can actually also compare the
00:46different textural properties or maybe flavor properties in these different kinds of fungi.
00:57Here, we're actually using a texture analyzer, so we're actually mimicking kind of the chewing
01:10motion of the mouth to measure what the texture of a specific sample is.
01:27Most of the work is actually done by the fungi themselves and they love growing on these
01:31kind of substrates, so that's great for us.
01:34And normally, you would also use this as a starting point to actually make mushrooms.
01:41But in our case, we stopped there and we started using the mycelium as is.
01:48So don't go on to all the trouble creating those mushrooms, but just use the mycelium itself.
01:58What was the biggest challenge in making this dish?
02:05I think the biggest challenge in producing this dish for the restaurant was actually
02:10to make it consistent and also to produce enough of them for each night.
02:17So every night, they needed about 60 dishes and not all of them, because it's biology,
02:24not all of them grow uniformly.
02:26So they had specific requirements on how beautiful they should look.
02:31And so we had to produce quite a lot to make enough dishes for everybody to eat and enjoy.
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