SMEY, a biotech company based in France and Germany, has launched NOY (Neobank of Yeasts), a digital databank of yeast fatty acid profiles designed to streamline the development of sustainable cultivated oils. The platform enables manufacturers to quickly identify yeast strains that naturally produce specific oils, drastically reducing the research and development time for creating tailored oils for use in food, cosmetics, and industrial applications.
Traditionally, producing a new oil through genetic engineering could take up to two years. With NOY, SMEY has reduced this process to a mere 30 days. Instead of altering yeast to produce a desired oil, the system searches a proprietary database of over 1,000 curated yeast strains to find those that already generate the required oil, expediting the development cycle.
Solutions hidden in yeast
Viktor Sartakov-Korzhov, the founder of SMEY, explained the company’s approach: “With NOY, we’re not trying to hack biology — we’re trying to understand it. This project is our way of engaging in dialogue with nature. Many of the solutions already exist — hidden in natural yeast strains like perfect compositions of oils and fats. Our role is to discover them, digitize them, and make them accessible through a system that merges biology with computation.”
The NOY platform is particularly relevant in light of the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which mandates that companies importing products like cocoa, palm oil, and shea butter must ensure their supply chains are deforestation-free. Companies failing to comply face potential fines of up to 4% of global turnover. Founded in Paris and operating an R&D center in Munich, SMEY helps businesses meet these regulatory requirements by providing sustainable, lab-grown alternatives to tropical oils.
Using NOY, SMEY has already developed cultivated cocoa butter with a stearic acid composition of 35%, matching the performance of traditional cocoa butter in food applications. The company has also created a semi-solid high-oleic butter for use in cosmetics, which provides a smooth, non-greasy texture and enhanced skin stability.
AI meets biology
NOY was developed after over two years of research and development, involving a team of more than 30 experts from the fields of microbial fermentation, lipid chemistry, bioinformatics, and computational biology. The platform integrates a physical library of yeast strains with SMEY’s proprietary AI system, which maps genomic, metabolic, and fermentation data to rapidly identify the best strains for specific product characteristics like texture, oxidative stability, and melting point.
