Frequently asked questions

1,000 engineered cultivars. The core superhot pepper lineup is 15 products; the remainder is distributed across 65 non-pepper organisms as the Beyond Peppers program, from basil at 500 SHU to engineered sugarcane at the Tier 5 Frontier.

65 crops in total — superhot peppers (Capsicum chinense and C. annuum), nightshade relatives (tomato, tomatillo, eggplant, potato, petunia, tobacco), fruits, grains, herbs and specialty crops. See the organism hubs for the complete list.

100 SHU (Kindling, our mildest Ember cultivar) to 16,000,000 SHU across the Heat Ladder frontier series. Most Beyond Peppers products sit in the 500–50,000 SHU band to match consumer and food-ingredient use.

Each product bundles the full construct FASTA, a JSON manifest (gene list, promoter system, codon-optimization notes), the flux-balance analysis predictions, CRISPR guide RNAs, a datasheet, a short product paper, and a signed ZIP for provenance.

Every product is a complete, synthesis-ready DNA design produced by our in-silico pipeline. Field cultivation requires a Specimen or higher license and is executed by the licensee, by us under contract, or by a partner grower.

A web application for designing capsaicin-pathway constructs end to end: pick a host organism, define a heat target and capsaicinoid profile, run flux-balance analysis, generate CRISPR guides, and export a ready-to-synthesize construct.

Yes. On Pro and Team plans you can specify host organism, promoter system, target SHU, and burn character; the platform assembles a construct and reports predicted yield before you commit to synthesis.

Free tier for browsing and sample downloads. Pro ($49/mo) for individual designers. Team ($499/mo) for organizations. Enterprise pricing for white-label and private clouds. Catalog licensing is priced separately.

Team and Enterprise plans include REST and MCP endpoints for construct generation, FBA, and CRISPR guide design. API keys are issued from the account dashboard.

Specimen (one named cultivar, limited field), Sector (one named cultivar across an industry sector), Genome (full-genome rights to a product line), and Platform (private white-label of the entire design stack).

Pick a product in the catalog, select a tier on its page, and complete the Stripe-powered checkout. For Sector, Genome, and Platform licenses, our team schedules a call to finalize terms.

Specimen licenses start in the low five figures. Sector licenses are six-figure deals typically with volume-based royalties. Genome and Platform licenses are negotiated per deal and may include equity components.

Yes — Sector licenses include industry-sector exclusivity by default, and Genome licenses can include geographic or category exclusivity. Specimen licenses are non-exclusive unless otherwise negotiated.

Capsaicin (C18H27NO3) is the principal pungent alkaloid in chili peppers. It binds the TRPV1 receptor on sensory neurons and produces the sensation of burning heat.

A measurement of pungency originally based on a 1912 taste-dilution assay by Wilbur Scoville. Modern SHU values are computed from HPLC quantification of the five major capsaicinoids and reported in a direct dilution-equivalent scale.

We profile placental transcriptomes, model the capsaicinoid pathway with flux-balance analysis, redesign bottleneck enzymes with the ESM2 protein language model, assemble constructs, and verify with CRISPR-targeted knock-ins in the host organism.

Pun1 (also called AT3) encodes an acyltransferase that condenses vanillylamine with a branched-chain fatty acyl-CoA to produce capsaicin. It is the single-gene master switch for pungency in Capsicum.

A mathematical method for predicting metabolic flux through a stoichiometric network at steady state. We use it to find pathway bottlenecks and estimate the maximum capsaicinoid yield achievable in a given host.

A guide RNA directs the Cas9 nuclease to a specific locus in the Capsicum genome, where we edit a native gene or insert a complete capsaicinoid-pathway cassette. Our constructs ship with computationally designed guide RNAs covering each target locus.

At the SHU levels of our Specimen cultivars, standard superhot handling guidance applies: eye protection, gloves, and ventilation when processing. We publish an SDS-equivalent handling sheet with every product.

Constructs are shipped as synthesis-ready sequence files, not as live organisms. Receiving physical plant material requires a Specimen license and an institutional biosafety review on the licensee side.

True capsaicin allergy is rare; capsaicin sensitivity is common and dose-dependent. The platform publishes projected capsaicinoid content for every product, enabling food-grade users to formulate for safe thresholds.

Montecito (headquarters, business operations) and Geneva (research operations, Europe-facing science team).

Priyanca Ford (Founder & CEO) and Ayaka Yama, PhD (Co-Founder & CSO). Two cousins — one in fusion energy, one in molecular genetics — who turned a shared obsession with extreme spice into a computational biology platform.

A U.S. provisional patent application was filed on October 9, 2026 (USPTO docket SS-CDP-2026-001P), covering the capsaicin-pathway construct library, the Beyond Peppers cross-host engineering method, and selected enzyme designs. The technology is patent pending.