YAVNE, ISRAEL — DairyX Foods Ltd., a food technology startup founded in 2022, created plant-based milk proteins using precision fermentation.

The company said its method produces casein proteins that may self-assemble into micelles, which are the primary building blocks of dairy products.

Israel-based DairyX’s precision fermentation technology uses microorganisms, specifically yeast, to create smart casein proteins.

The company said it also has worked to enhance the gelation of its casein micelles, which enable manufacturers to produce firm, stretchy and creamy products while using traditional dairy-making techniques.

“Not all caseins produced using precision fermentation are alike,” said Maya Bar-Zeev, PhD, head of product development and downstream processing at DairyX. “We trained yeast to produce the next generation of casein. DairyX's patent-pending casein is an advanced form created to precisely and effectively organize into micelles.”

The company is “focused on scaling up its fermentation process and collaborating with dairy companies,” said Arik Ryvkin, chief executive officer and founder of DairyX Foods.   

“We have achieved several key objectives with our solutions,” said Galit Kuznets, head of strain development and fermentation at DairyX. “Our biological design genetically manipulated yeast to produce functional caseins that we organized into micelles. We developed a fast-tracked screening process that simulated evolution to locate super-producers of protein from among millions of yeast strains. Our machine-learning models simulated fermentation to determine optimal fermentation conditions. We have proven our ability to create a gel from reconstituted casein micelles. All these ingenuities have helped us work smarter and faster to create highly functional micelles.”