MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — As a gastronomic delicacy, the five-ounce hamburger that Mark Post has painstakingly created here surely will not turn any heads. But Dr. Post is hoping that it
will change some minds.
The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality.
“Let’s make a proof of concept, and change the discussion from ‘this is never going to work’ to, ‘well, we actually showed that it works, but now we need to get funding and work on it,’ “ Dr. Post said in an interview last fall in his office at Maastricht University.
Given the difficulties, Modern Meadow is first focusing on creating cultured leather. Its process does not use stem cells but rather skin fibroblasts, specialized cells that produce collagen. “There are a lot of parallels to cultured meat, except that it is a lot less controversial because you’re not going to eat it,” Dr. Forgacs said. “But if we can convince the universe that we can build leather, it will be much easier to convince the universe that we can build meat.”
In his work on cultured meat, Dr. Post uses a type of stem cell called a myosatellite cell, which the body itself uses to repair injured muscle tissue. The cells, which are found in a certain part of muscle tissue, are removed from the cow neck and put in containers with the growth medium. Through much trial and error, the researchers have learned how best to get the cells to grow and divide, doubling repeatedly over about three weeks.
“But we need billions,” said Anon van Essen, the technician in Dr. Post’s lab.
Other researchers are studying different kinds of stem cells that, unlike myosatellite cells, can reproduce indefinitely, ensuring a “livestock-autonomous” supply of cells to make cultured meat. Dutch researchers at Utrecht University are trying to isolate embryonic stem cells from pigs and cows. And Nicholas Genovese of the University of Missouri is trying to develop a type of stem cell that is “induced” from a regular adult cell. So a skin cell from a pig, perhaps, could be turned into a stem cell that could reproduce indefinitely and differentiate into muscle tissue to create cultured pork.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/science/engineering-the-325000-in-vitro-burger.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Datum: 20-Feb-2012
Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger
Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger
Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year. At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%.
"We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said.
Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.
Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%.
Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.
Bron: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761
Bron: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761
Grow your own meat
Instead of getting meat from animals raised in pastures, he wants to grow steaks in lab conditions, directly from muscle stem cells. If successful, the technology will transform the way we produce food. "We want to turn meat production from a farming process to a factory process," he explained.
Prof Post is not the first to dream this dream. In the mid 20th Century, Dutchman Willem van Eelen - back then a budding medical student - dreamt of creating meat without killing animals, by using stem cells.
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| Grow your own meat |
Prof Post is not the first to dream this dream. In the mid 20th Century, Dutchman Willem van Eelen - back then a budding medical student - dreamt of creating meat without killing animals, by using stem cells.
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