Tissue scientists serve up lab-prepared meat as a substitute for beef farming.
Popular Sciences
Who needs a farm: If Jason Matheny's vision comes true, steaks will be served in the future directly from the lab. Mathani, an agricultural scientist from the University of Maryland and the founder of New Harvest - a non-profit organization that finances projects to grow meat cultures in flasks in order to prevent the slaughter of animals.
From muscle cells harvested from turkeys, the researchers grew a thin layer of tissue. These tissues can be used to make delicious meatballs, Matani says, but the ultimate order - a thick and juicy artificial steak - is much more difficult to prepare. This is because the texture of the steak consists of muscles, fat, cartilage and blood vessels, and these are difficult to produce outside the animal body. Recently, scientists from MIT achieved significant progress and were able to assemble blood vessels from human and mouse stem cells. The research suggests a way to widen blood vessels, and this process is necessary to create thick tissues such as steak explains Mattani. However, this is still not the whole recipe. The next step is XNUMXD muscles.
