Researchers have successfully produced cultured adipose tissue in a manner that allows for the large-scale production of more flavorful cultured meat.
Researchers at Tufts University have successfully mass-produced adipose tissue in the lab that has a texture and composition similar to that found naturally in animals, as explained in a study published today in eLife. The results are applicable to the production of cultured meat grown entirely from cells, resulting in a more realistic texture and flavor.
Startups around the world are developing cell-cultured meats such as chicken, beef, pork and fish. Most are in the early stages of development, not ready for large-scale production, and, with a few exceptions, not yet approved for commercial sale.
Most of these products in development are in the form of mixtures of unstructured cells. Think chicken nuggets instead of chicken breast slices. What’s missing is the true texture of a fillet or steak—the texture created by muscle fibers, connective tissue, and fat.
Fat not only affects the texture of meat, but also its taste. In consumer tests using natural beef with varying fat content, beef with 36% fat scored the highest.
Producing sufficient amounts of cultured adipose tissue has been a major challenge, because as the fat grows into clumps, the cells in the middle become starved of oxygen and nutrients. and provide nutrients. Researchers do not yet have a way to replicate that vascular network on a large scale in laboratory-grown tissue, so muscle and fat can only be grown to a few millimeters in size.
To circumvent this limitation, the researchers first grew adipocytes from mice and pigs in flat two-dimensional layers, then harvested those cells and used alginate (developed from seaweed) and other A binder aggregated them into a three-dimensional mass. Both microbial transglutaminase (MTG) are already used in some commercial foods.
“Our goal was to develop a relatively simple method to produce large amounts of fat. Since adipose tissue is primarily cells and has few other structural components, it is possible to aggregate cells after growth.” sufficient to replicate the taste, nutritional and textural profiles of natural animal fats.” Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA). “This works if you’re creating a food-only tissue because once you’ve collected a lot of fat, you don’t need to keep the cells alive.”
taste and feel
The aggregated adipocytes immediately looked like adipose tissue, but the team conducted a series of further experiments to see if they really recapitulated the characteristics of the animal’s native fat.
First, they explored texture by compressing adipose tissue and seeing how much pressure it could withstand compared to natural animal fat. We found that expanded fat can withstand pressure similar to that of livestock and poultry adipose tissue, and cellular expanded fat bound with MTG behaves like rendered fat, similar to lard and beef tallow. suggested that the texture of cultured fat could be fine-tuned using different types and amounts of binders, most closely resembling the actual texture of fat within meat.
The molecular composition of fat is also important. Cooking releases hundreds of compounds that add flavor and aroma to the meat. Most of these compounds are derived from fats, including lipids and their constituent fatty acids.
Tufts’ research team examined the composition of molecules from cell-cultured fat and found that the mixture of fatty acids from cultured mouse fat was different from native mouse fat, whereas cultured porcine fat had fatty acids much closer to native tissue. The team’s preliminary research suggested that growing adipocytes could be supplemented with different lipids to more closely match the fatty acid composition of natural meat. I’m here.
“This method of aggregating cultured adipocytes with binders can be applied to large-scale production of cultured adipose tissue in bioreactors, which is a key obstacle in the development of cultivated meat,” said Tufts and TUCCA director. . “We continue to look at all aspects of cultured meat production with the goal of enabling mass production of meat that looks, tastes and feels like the real thing.”
TUCCA is leading the development of the growing industry of cellular agriculture and, together with the TUCCA Consortium, a consortium of academic and industry members, solving key technological challenges in cell-cultured meat production.
Original: Lab-grown fat may give cultured meat its authentic flavor and texture
Than: Tufts University
