Cultivated meat, once considered science fiction, is swiftly becoming a reality. Scientists are studying lab-grown meat using pharmaceutical cell culture knowledge.
What is cultivated meat?
Alternative terms like “clean meat,” “in – vitro meat,” and “lab-grown meat” may be more recognizable to you if you’ve heard of produced meat before. Most experts, on the other hand, prefer the phrase “cultivated,” believing it to be more accurate and approachable. It’s meat made from animal cells that resemble the taste and nutrients of beef.
Tissue engineering and animal cell culture develop non-animal meat alternatives. As a rising population and increased meat consumption necessitate, there are several issues with industrial animal agribusiness. As a result, new technologies must be developed to supply this need, and farmed meat has great promise in this regard.
The world will have 9.5 billion people by 2050, and as earnings rise in poorer nations, people are eating more meat. At some point between 70 and 100 percent, the demand for meat is projected to increase. Our present levels are already having an enormous influence on the Earth and human health in terms of land usage, greenhouse gas emissions, foodborne sickness, and zoonotic diseases, as well as the development of resistance to antibiotics.
How does cultivated meat work?
There are a lot of complicated parts to making cultivated meat, but the first step is to find a good source of cells. This may originate from a living animal under local anesthesia or a freshly slain animal whose tissue is still alive. In either case, this tiny piece of tissue is taken to the lab, where the stem cells that are needed are separated.
A stem cell can make different types of cells and can also renew itself and make copies of itself. Because of this, we want to use different types of stem cells as the starting cell line in this process. We also want to work with a lot of stem cells so that we can make enough biomass to turn the meat tissue into a different kind of tissue.
These cells are “grown” in a nutrient-dense medium that has everything a cell needs to live, such as glucose, amino acids, vitamins, etc. A bioreactor, which is what we call informally a “cultivator,” is used to do this. Instead of generating beer, it enables cells develop into “flesh,” like a giant brewery fermentation tank.
We change the medium so cells may generate muscle, fat, and connective tissue. With a scaffolding framework, the cells may line up and build the natural architecture, much like in an animal’s body. From there, we have to figure out how to harvest, package, and sell the product.
Maintaining quality
Scientists say that there is no legal framework for growing meat, but that this is being talked about. Lab-grown meat researchers are turning to the food and pharmaceutical sectors for safety and quality controls. We must verify that the cells used are free of bacteria, viruses, and other diseases. All of the connections between the bio-reactor systems we use are sealed and cleaned to make sure of this.
Also, we need to make sure that any extras, like the scaffolding, are safe for food or even biodegradable. Some people are thinking about using alginate from algae or cellulose from plants. that there is much less risk for customers since the cells are eaten instead of put into the body for medical purposes. In this case, the cells are already dead when we eat them, so they don’t need to work. Instead, we only need to copy the way meat feels and tastes, which makes the product a lot simpler.
Cell selection
There are different types of cells that can be used to grow meat, and experts say that the type we choose affects a lot of the bioprocess we are building.
For instance, pluripotent stem cells can change into fat, muscle, and connective tissue, while other types of stem cells come from the adult tissue itself. This means that we can take stem cell populations from muscle tissue and use them to make only muscle. The type of stem cell basically tells you how many and what kinds of cells you can make.
Experts think it’s interesting that the location of the biopsy can also change the results. On an animal, there are many different cuts of meat with different tastes and textures. I think there is some preliminary evidence in the literature that suggests, for example, that taking a biopsy from a region with fast twitch muscle fibers instead of slow twitch muscle fibers is more likely to create fast twitch muscles. In other words, depending on where a biopsy is taken, the meat could be white or dark. They also said that there are other factors that need more research. For example, does the scaffolding material, the length of time the cells are left to grow, or how mature the cells are when they are eaten affect how the product feels and tastes?
Is there any CHALLENGE?
The biggest problem right now is the cost of raising meat and how to do it in a way that works well on a larger scale. The high price is mostly because of the extra proteins, but it’s also because of the amino acids, lipids, and other things that the cells need to grow.
Is that Healthier…???
In recent years, people have become more interested in eating healthier foods. What if we could change the way meat is made so that it has more nutrients? They think this really is possible. “You can change the cells’ metabolism so that they make omega-3 fatty acids instead of the saturated or unsaturated fats found in meat. You could also, in theory, get rid of the enzymes that are responsible for the sugars found in red meats. Neu5Gc is a type of sugar that has been linked to a higher risk of cancer. If regulations let you, you could use genetic engineering to get rid of this sugar. There are so many things that could happen.
References
The science of cultivated meat | GFI
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