This is mildly interesting: scientists have modified muscle cells in culture so that they produce their own growth factors. This is a major cost reduction, because now you won’t need to constantly supplement your vat of muscle cells with a relatively expensive reagent.
Cellular agriculture – the production of meat from cells grown in bioreactors rather than harvested from farm animals – is taking leaps in technology that are making it a more viable option for the food industry. One such leap has now been made at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA), led by David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor of Engineering, in which researchers have created bovine (beef) muscle cells that produce their own growth factors, a step that can significantly cut costs of production.
Growth factors, whether used in laboratory experiments or for cultivated meat, bind to receptors on the cell surface and provide a signal for cells to grow and differentiate into mature cells of different types. In this study published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, researchers modified stem cells to produce their own fibroblast growth factor (FGF) which triggers the growth of skeletal muscle cells – the kind one finds in a steak or hamburger.
Keep in mind that this works for cultured meat cells, which is completely different from the artificial meat made from plants that you can buy in stores right now. I have a few reservations about it.
This is basically a tool to remove a regulatory limit on muscle growth. When this happens in vivo, we call it cancer. I suspect the marketing department will balk at labeling it “tumor meat”.
The technique amplifies one cell type. Edible meat has texture and is made up of a mix of cell types, fat and connective tissue. This is a way to make large quantities of something that is equivalent to ‘pink slime’ or, as the marketers call it, ‘lean finely textured beef.’ We already do this! I guess it’s a good thing to be able to produce large quantities of protein in the form of ‘pink slime’ more cheaply, and without the need to slaughter animals to do it.
Without a regulatory limit on growth, though, don’t be surprised if a news headline later announces that Boston has been eaten by a giant ever-growing blob of immortal meat.
I used to hope for vat grown meat. By now, plant based alternatives are not good, I’m pretty much “meh” . Please put more research into vegan cheese.
Yeah. Vegan cheese.
Tumor meat would work for obligate carnivore pets, though. There are a lot of domestic cats in the world.
It was already done, long ago and done a lot better.
This was Chicken Little from the Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth. They fed a giant mass of chicken tissue with processed algae grown in towers by mirror focused sunlight.
Clifford Simak also did it better. They, Fishhook, brought back steak plants from another planet.
Thanks, but I’ll stick to plant based fake meat.
I come to you from the state that brought you Pink Slime [ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/iowa-gov-wants-probe-of-smear-campaign-against-pink-slime /] with a message from the stars:
Why is no one developing meat-based fake plants?
I was kind of wondering about that.
Is it plausible to worry about some agent from the manufacturing process leaking into the product and causing cancer in the humans consuming this stuff (or is it a given that stuff that messes with cow cell development will almost certainly not affect human cells [raise your hands if you want to take this bet])
That was my thought, too. I’d want to see some high-quality studies of what such meat does to human cells before I’d want to partake. (Although, IIUC, doing such studies on human subjects would likely raise ethical concerns.)
Bring on Soylent Green!
Awesome.
Soon I’ll be able to put very meaty gravy on everything.
Shades of “The Chicken Heart” from the old time radio show “Lights Out”
While eating such synthomeat may or may not induce known or new, hmmm, hypertrophism, potential lab boo-boos could have quite messy consequences. (The script is writing itself in your head now, isn’t it? Consider which type of cell source would provide amino acids etc in optimum proportions for human sustenance…)
But don’t worry – the AIs maintaining the processors will take care of everything!
Our foresighted capitalists are surely designing the factories in Wichita, Wuhan, Worcester, & Warsaw already…
OT: Liberty University has been assessed a $14 million fine for suppressing crime reports at the school violating Federal Education laws. According to one report the crimes involved sexual assaults. There’s also a $2 million assessment to implementing changes in their reporting.
Re: robro @ # 14 – IIRC, Jerry Falwell Jr took a great interest in the Trump/DeVos “educational reform” agenda, particularly in the promise of reducing those pesky harassment-etc reporting requirements.
So the cost reduction is due to no longer needing to use fetal bovine serum in the growth medium, which is expensive since it’s extracted from the blood of cow fetuses.
Definitely an improvement, both ethically and financially.
Re safety concerns and customer concerns, they are addressed in the paper:
(https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-sustainability/fulltext/S2949-7906(23)00009-5)
(heh… cisgenic overexpression)
This is not doing anything to change my mind that the best vegan foods are the ones that don’t pretend to be meat. If the choice is between tube meat or just eating beans and lentils, well, I already like beans and lentils.
Why does “perpetually growing meat” sound like something that belongs in my spam folder next to all of the ads for certain… products?
FGF is a protein. Almost certainly not carcinogenic in itself, and would probably be broken down in the gut.
Won’t stop clueless idiots from claiming it causes cancer, or will mutate you, or has “nanoparticles”, or… what ever.
Also.. One word, from a certain video game’s scientist, whose research you run across, “Cystipigs”.
If only Michael Crichton were alive to warn us of the dangers of pink slime running amok and slaughtering people. Instead of, you know, susceptibility to food poisoning, pollution from mechanical farming, terrible taste, etc.
I, for one, welcome our pink onco-slime overlords.