Miso is a traditional Japanese seasoning paste produced by fermenting soybeans using the power of koji mold. Among many Japanese fermented foods, miso especially has tight connections to Japanese lives and cultures. Before, it was common for each household to make miso by hand, although, with modernization, industrially produced miso is becoming more popular.  It is also notable that miso has many benefits for human health: Japanese cohort studies have shown that increased consumption of miso soups is associated with a reduced risk of cancer incidence for many types of cancers. However, studies about miso biology are not sufficient to understand the power of miso.

Recently genomic analysis is popularly employed to understand ecosystems of microbes. As the costs of genome analysis have explosively decreased in this decade, genome analysis is becoming a tool familiar with citizen scientists, like a microscope.

Utilizing the genome analysis, we start to study microbe ecosystems  in miso. Our project has been named MISOMICS, which comes from the words, MISO and genoMICS. 

In this talk, we will discuss the purpose and progress of the project, as well as its future potential and prospects.

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Presenter: Atsushi Niida

Please join in person at BioClub Tokyo or online at https://zoom.bioclub.tokyo

The event language will be Japanese.

This event is a free event.

Please also join the #misomics channel on https://discord.bioclub.tokyo