A perfusion system that imitates blood vessels in the animal muscles has improved a lot of the consistency of a piece of in vitro meat.
One of the aspects in which the meat cultivated in the laboratory is more distant from that obtained from animal slaughter is the consistency: the in vitro meat, more similar to a mixture of cells without a defined structure, does not have the same palatability of a steak made of muscle fibers, fat and connective tissue.
But he is working on it, and a group of Japanese scientists has taken a remarkable step forward. The researchers made a laboratory grow in the laboratory nugget of chicken by raising it constantly with a network of artificial tubeswhich imitate the capillaries present inside the muscles.
Nourished at every point. As explained in an article published on Trends in Biotechnologythe results are satisfactory: the Fiber Cave network has circulated oxygen and nutrients in all the cells in culture, including those in the center of the pile, which usually are not sufficiently sprayed and die.
The result is a piece of meat of the size of a nugget (2 centimeters in length and 1 thick, for 11 grams of weight) with one fibrous structure more similar to that of an animal muscle and good bite resistance. Something very different from the flat pulp with little thickness, similar to ground, which is usually obtained with the cell -based meat.
Artificial veins. Scientists from the University of Tokyo led by the SHOJI Takeuchi Fabric Engineering expert inserted in a biorettor (a device in which biological reactions are induced) living cells suspended in a gel, through which a network was passed with more than a thousand 3D printed quarry fibers. In this semi -permeable framework, oxygen and nutrients have been scrolled. Thus realizing a sort of internal perfusionsuitable for supporting the growth of a more often fabric.
Edible and “stuffed”. The technique could be adapted to cultivate more diverse meat “cuts”, playing with the quantity and position of the fibers to replicate the consistency, for example, of the chicken breast. For the moment the fake capillaries have been removed by hand, but in the future they could be made in edible cellulosewhich could be left in the meat to improve its chewing. The quarry fibers could then be filled with selenium or zinc to improve the nutritional intake of the food, or even condiments and spices to make the meat tastier or more spicy.
Too niche? The authors of the research also think that by spraying the meat with artificial blood rather than with simple nutrients it would improve the circulation of oxygen and more thick cultivated pieces of cultivated meat could be obtained.
This first chicken nugget has not been tasted (it was a machine to evaluate its palatability), but with adequate funding, products based on new technology could be available in about ten years.
Other scientists instead believe that the artificial capillaries further complicate an already slow, not scalable and expensive process. Which to be implemented on a large scale should instead become simpler and faster.
