How we know what we know

Everything you see is a computed design target

Our cultivars are designed in silico. Each heat value is calculated from a designed capsaicinoid profile, using the standard relationship between capsaicinoid concentration and Scoville Heat Units. These are predictions from a model — not readings from a grown fruit. No plant in our catalog has been grown and measured yet. When one is, its validation status changes from computed to measured, in the open.

The finding the designs are built on

Using RNA-seq across pepper fruit development, differential expression analysis, and constraint-based metabolic flux modeling, we found that the vanillylamine branch of the pathway carries the flux control — not the condensation enzyme Pun1/AT3, which the field has long assumed is rate-limiting. That one result reorients where you engineer to raise capsaicinoid output, and it is what our designs act on. The differential-expression numbers behind it are reproducible from the same public sequencing data we used.

What the model does and does not tell us

• It tells us direction. Which edits should push capsaicinoid output up, and which step limits the pathway.
• It does not tell us the exact final concentration. That depends on accumulation time, tissue mass, and turnover, which a flux model does not capture. Only wet-lab measurement settles it.
• There is a hard ceiling. Pure capsaicin is 16,000,000 SHU, which is 100% of dry weight. The highest total capsaicinoid concentration ever measured in a real pepper is about 10.6% of dry weight. We label any design above that line as a design target beyond demonstrated biology.

Pepper is real; cross-species is concept

Our pepper designs are organism-matched, with guide RNAs designed against the real Capsicum genome. The cross-species designs — a spicy tomato, a spicy strawberry — are a concept: illustrations of where the platform could be pointed, not finished, organism-specific designs, and not for sale.

The roadmap to measured

We are validating designs in our greenhouse now. As grown material is quantified by HPLC, each measured value replaces its computed target on the validation tracker. Live plants and physical DNA are planned for 2028. Until then, every figure here is honestly a design.