Making a hamburger from bovine stem cells is a long and complex process, the cost of which, according to scientists, is almost 10 million rubles. But soon everything will change
Removing muscle stem cells from a cow or pig is a fairly simple procedure. At the same time, the animal will not suffer practically. In the laboratory, these cells are placed in a special environment and fed with fetal serum - the plasma that remains in the blood after clotting. It is easy to guess that it is excreted from the body of the unborn fetus.
As a result, small strips of tissue grow, which then begin to stretch daily, mimicking the work of muscles and forcing the future steak to grow. Alas, due to the lack of blood and iron, this meat looks pale, not like your favorite loin. The researchers hope that supplementation of myoglobin, an iron-rich protein, will help solve this problem.
True, the staff of the Maastricht University (Netherlands), working under the leadership of Mark Post, ran into another obstacle: pig muscle stem cells can divide only 20-30 times, and then the tissue stops growing. Fortunately, their colleagues and fellow countrymen from the University of Utrecht were able to show that it is possible to take other stem cells from pig muscles - the so-called muscle progenitor cells, the population of which can grow from thousands to several billion in a matter of months.
Another difficulty is that the law prohibits tasting laboratory-grown meat, because it was fed with fetal serum, which may contain substances harmful to humans. Therefore, researchers from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) are working on a synthetic substitute based on a specific type of aquatic bacteria.
If artificial meat can be brought to perfection, the expensive process will move to the meat processing plants of the future, where the same will be done faster and cheaper. As the price of animal feed continues to rise, laboratory meat can become a competitive alternative to beef, pork and chicken in just a few years. And then it will save the world.