Developed by scientists from Tufts University (Massachusets, USA) immortalized bovine muscle stem cells (iBSC), which can grow rapidly and can divide hundreds of times, even indefinitely. It can be obtained this way meat to eat without having to get it from animals.
But before cellular livestock, the process of growing meat in bioreactors, is possible to feed millions of people, several technical challenges must first be overcome. it will be necessary culturing muscle cells from chicken, fish, cows and other food sources to produce millions of metric tons per year.
Research from Tufts University’s Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA), published in the journal ACS Synthetic BiologyHe hopes that researchers and companies around the world will be able to access this technology and develop new products without having to repeatedly take cells from farm animal biopsies.
Cell cultured meat production It will require very high capacity muscle and fat cells to grow and divide.. While cell-grown meat has even been pre-approved by the US FDA for chicken meat (as well as a hamburger grown with mastodon DNA), the products still expensive and hard to get.
Preserve “young” chromosomes
Normal muscle stem cells from living animals to start a culture typically divide only about 50 times before they start aging and are no longer viable. While it is theoretically possible for these stem cells to produce significant amounts of meat, the immortalized cells developed by the TUCCA team offer many advantages. The first is the possibility of producing significantly more mass for meat production.
Another advantage is that by making immortalized cells widely available, they will lower the barrier of entry for other researchers to explore cell agriculture, thus overcome challenges to reduce costs and increase production.
“Often researchers had to make their own isolates of animal stem cells, which was expensive and time consuming, or use model cell lines from less related species, such as mouse muscle cells,” said Andrew Stout. TUCCA and the project’s research leader. “By using these new permanent bovine cell lines, you get to the heart of the matter.” indicates.
Two steps were key to transforming ordinary bovine muscle stem cells into immortalized bovine muscle stem cells. As most cells divide and age, they begin to lose DNA at the ends of their chromosomes, called telomeres, like frayed strings that fray with use. This can lead to errors when copying or repairing DNA.. It can also cause gene loss and eventually cell death.
Researchers engineered bovine stem cells. constantly rebuild your telomeresIt effectively retains its “juvenile” chromosomes and is ready for another round of replication and cell division.
immortalize cells
The second step in immortalizing cells was to make them. It constantly produces a protein that stimulates a critical stage of cell division. This effectively speeds up the process and helps cells grow faster.
Muscle stem cells are not the end product you want to eat. They must not only divide and grow, but also differentiate. The same, or at least very similar, mature muscle cells we eat in a steak or steak. Stout and his research team found that the new stem cells differentiate into mature muscle cells, although not exactly the same as muscle cells derived from animal muscle cells or conventional bovine stem cells.
“They can be mature enough to mimic the flavor and texture of natural meat.“This is something we need to investigate further. They double up very quickly, so they may need a little more time to reach full maturity,” Stout said.
“Like the natural meat we eat today, these cells become an inert material that we want to taste delicious and provide a wide array of nutritional benefits,” said David Kaplan, Stern Family professor. Director of biomedical engineering and TUCCA at Tufts.
Reference work: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssynbio.3c00216
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