Israeli scientists say they have found a way to accelerate the production of lab-grown meat and potentially reduce its cost.
Companies around the world are working to introduce mass-produced artificial meat products, which are produced from in vitro cell cultures of animal cells. But the sector has been hampered by high production costs, due to the lengthy process involved in growing the meat.
On Monday, a team from the Weizmann Institute of Sciences published the peer-reviewed research in the journal development cell It shows that the process can be accelerated through a “biochemical pathway” that determines the speed at which cells form in artificial flesh.
Acting as a gas pedal for artificial meat production, the discovery could allow producers to modify the speed at which cells become meat, and could potentially take weeks away from a process in which current It takes about a month.
“A major issue facing this new industry is the slowing of the yield process and the level, and this pathway, or the biochemical signaling process, has the potential to improve both of these,” Prof. Eldad Tzahor, who led the research, Dr Tamar Egler.
The growth process of stem cells triggered to produce uncontrolled, cultured meat produces copious amounts of new muscle. The challenge is to control the process so that the cells mature into fibers.
The common solution today is to prematurely stop the growth of muscle stem cells and wait for the muscle’s existing supply to mature into fibers, but Tzahor and his team say their solution eliminates this need.
Example image: Lab automation engineer Chigozi Nri prepares nutrients to feed cells, as research director Nicolas Legendre watches, at the lab of cultured meat startup New Age Meat, which has produced cell-based pork in San Francisco . A growing number of startups around the world are making cell-based or cultured meats that don’t require killing animals. (AP Photo/Terry Chee)
Scientists accidentally became interested in artificial meat when they were conducting their ongoing medical research into muscle stem cells called myoblasts, which are essential for recovery after injuries in humans. These same cells obtained from animals are used as seeds for artificial meat production.
Tzahor found that the maturation process of cells needed to trigger the processes for the production of edible cultured meat is accelerated when an enzyme called ERK is inhibited. When this happens, another enzyme causes the cells to begin fusing the shorter fibers more quickly, and this in turn activates another enzyme, CaMKII. This second enzyme triggers massive myoblast fusion and maturation.
The researchers found in experiments that their pathway drives the fusion and maturation of cultured myoblasts taken from several species of farm animals, including chickens, cows and sheep.
Tzahor and his team have founded a startup, Profuse Technology, to market the extracts to the artificial meat industry. He said it was an astonishing journey for research that began to help humans after injuries, without thinking about food.
Weizmann Institute of Science Prof. Eldad Tzahor (courtesy of the Weizmann Institute)
Myoblasts are formed in the embryo, but a small fraction of these cells remain on top of muscle fibers throughout our lives, even though their numbers decrease with age. When a muscle is injured, these stem cells are responsible for its repair and regeneration.
To begin the repair process, these cells must stop dividing so that they can mature and begin fusing with each other and with the injured muscle tissue.
“Finding the elements that control the fusion of myoblasts is critical to understanding muscle repair,” Eigler said. “There is no regeneration without fusion.”