(ORDO NEWS) — Biologists have created test-tube meat based on sheep muscle cells supplemented with woolly mammoth myoglobin.
Biotechnology startup Vow is developing meat products based on cell cultures.
It is believed that in the future, this approach will provide people with nutritious and balanced products, and for the environment it will be much safer than traditional animal husbandry.
In addition, it will allow you to create new dishes that would be impossible to obtain in the usual ways.
This was demonstrated by an unusual experiment conducted by Vow in conjunction with Naturalis and the creative agency Wunderman Thompson.
The company’s official blog says that to obtain “mammoth meat” biologists used the gene for myoglobin , a key muscle protein that largely determines both the taste and texture of meat.
Its sequence for mammoths is not fully known.
Therefore, the gaps were filled with the corresponding fragments of the same gene of African elephants, which are considered the closest living relatives of woolly giants, which became extinct several thousand years ago.
Such a chimeric gene was introduced into sheep muscle cells, the cultivation of which in a bioreactor has already been well developed.
As a result, it was possible to produce about 400 grams of “mammoth meat” and cook meatballs from such unusual meat.
“We chose the woolly mammoth because it is an important symbol of biodiversity loss and climate change,” said Vow co-founder Tim Noakesmith.
“It is believed that these creatures disappeared due to hunting and climate warming at the end of the last ice age.”
“We would like to stimulate conversation about what and how we eat and what alternatives to this are possible in the future,” added Bas Korsten of Wunderman Thompson.
Vow is far from the only startup that is actively developing technologies for obtaining “meat from a test tube”.
However, unlike most competitors who are trying to create the safest, most effective and cheap analogues of conventional meat, Vow focuses on obtaining non-standard products.
The company is trying to work with the meat of crocodiles, alpaca, kangaroos and peacocks. And Vow’s first ready-made solution was Japanese quail meat dishes, which will begin to be delivered to restaurants this year.
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