Target deprioritized 2026-05-16 — koji-cordycepin engineering removed from active cassette stack. Strategic call during 2026-05-15 sweep walkthrough Item 7. comp-023's GREEN verdict on metabolic burden stands as a successful methodology validation (FBA on iWV1314 works; cytosolic-cassette burden modeling is reliable), but cordycepin is no longer an active koji engineering target. Three reasons:

1. No novel chokepoint coverage. Cordycepin's chokepoint targets (URAT1 modulation, AMPK / mitochondrial NLRP3-priming dampening) are already covered by the medicinal-mushroom-complement-track via cultivation of Cordyceps militaris, which natively co-produces cordycepin with pentostatin at the co-evolved ratio. Engineering cordycepin into koji duplicates coverage that exists in a peer track at a different chassis (cultivation vs. genetic engineering).
2. Open dose-vs-achievable-titer gap. comp-023 verified metabolic feasibility (cell carries the cassette at Jeennor 2023's 564 mg/L/day single-cassette optimized titer) but did NOT analyze whether that titer translates to a therapeutic dose in realistic home-fermentation conditions on a multi-cassette strain (uricase + lactoferrin competing for resources). Back-of-envelope at Jeennor's titer in a typical home batch lands at the LOW end of published nutraceutical doses (~70–280 mg/day vs 250–1500 mg/day target), assuming optimal titer transfer to home conditions and no multi-cassette penalty — both optimistic. The titer-to-therapeutic-dose conversion question was treated as out-of-scope by comp-023 and has not been closed by any subsequent analysis.
3. Commercial availability. Cordycepin from cultivated C. militaris extract is widely available at $20–60/month nutraceutical pricing, with native pentostatin co-protection. The "endgame strain = full coverage + simple" principle (per koji-endgame-strain.md) does not justify the engineering complexity (three open follow-up gates: comp-025 ADA substrate competition, comp-026 multi-cassette induction interference, comp-023 v2 dynamic FBA validation) for a payload that delivers no novel coverage and may not reach therapeutic dose anyway.

Active cordycepin route in the platform: cultivation per medicinal-mushroom-complement-track.md. Active koji endgame strain cassettes (post-2026-05-16): uricase + lactoferrin + DAF SCR1-4 (the secreted-protein triple where koji has unique value via solid-state food-grade fermentation + home accessibility for proteins not otherwise easily obtained). See koji-endgame-strain.md §"Evaluated and deprioritized". comp-025 / comp-026 / comp-023 v2 marked Deprioritized in computational-experiments.md.

Cordycepin (cns1+cns2) Cassette Metabolic Burden: Computational Analysis (comp-023)

Frozen analysis archived to ./etc/experiments/comp-023-cns1-cns2-metabolic-burden/wiki-archive.md (183 lines). This wiki stub remains so cross-references resolve and the page stays discoverable. Computational analyses are write-once artifacts; the daemon does not need to re-read them on every sweep, so the long content lives next to the experiment that produced it at etc/experiments/comp-023-cns1-cns2-metabolic-burden/.

Does adding the bacterial cns1+cns2 cordycepin biosynthesis pathway (Jeennor 2023, PMID 38071331, 564 mg/L/day in A. oryzae) on top of the dual uricase + lactoferrin cassette in the koji-endgame-strain §1 design impose a prohibitive metabolic burden, defined by:

Where the analysis lives: - Full archived analysis: ./etc/experiments/comp-023-cns1-cns2-metabolic-burden/wiki-archive.md - Experiment directory (inputs, scripts, outputs): ./etc/experiments/comp-023-cns1-cns2-metabolic-burden/ - Computational experiments index: computational-experiments.md