By Courtesy of Forged
Growing meat in laboratories opens up such a broad field of possibilities that we could one day be eating woolly mammoth. In fact, thanks to the DNA of the prehistoric animal, an Australian company recently managed to make a mammoth meatball.
Growing meat in laboratories opens up such a broad field of possibilities that we could one day be eating woolly mammoth. In fact, thanks to the DNA of the prehistoric animal, an Australian company recently managed to make a mammoth meatball.
So how is it possible to serve wooly mammoth meat given that these huge beasts have been extinct for centuries? All lies in the fact that scientists have the DNA of the prehistoric animal, whose remains are still being unearthed in the Arctic. According to CNN, excavations have allowed the sequencing of the mammoth genome.
At the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, researchers drew on this to recreate mammoth muscle protein. Specifically, they focused on the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin to create meat tissue in the lab, using elephant DNA to fill in any gaps in the sequence. It may sound like an early April Fools' prank, but this creation is very real, and forms part of new research in the development of lab-cultured meat. The Australian company (Vow) helming this project wants to demonstrate the growth potential of this booming sector. Above all, the firm wants to prove that lab-grown meat can be produced without the need for any animals to be slaughtered. The challenge for this food-tech company is to find ways of working without fetal bovine serum, taken from pregnant cows sent to the slaughterhouse. Meat cultivated in vitro is often composed of cells that can only grow if fed with this elixir.
In its search for slaughter-free alternatives, this Australian start-up has researched around 50 species, from peacock to crocodile to alpaca. Vow's laboratory has developed cultivated Japanese quail meat, for example, which it plans to debut in Singapore this year.
Originally, the project was to develop a recipe for dodo meat, the famous large bird that disappeared in the late 17th century. But scientists do not have the DNA of this species native to Mauritius, which led the firm to focus instead on the mammoth. In an interview with the Guardian, Vow's boss said that working on woolly mammoth meat was also interesting for its symbolism, since the species is emblematic of the animals that have disappeared due to the effects of global warming, becoming extinct after the last ice age. The scientists in charge of the project explain that their mammoth meatball is not intended for human consumption, simply for questions of health and safety. Indeed, its allergenic potential is unknown, since the protein used to manufacture this meat hasn't been around for 5,000 years.
Regardless, this research has not failed to gain attention. And it's not the first time that a food-tech company has focused on an original animal species to create lab-grown meat. Last year, a New York-based start-up revealed its research into the development of tiger, elephant, giraffe and zebra meat.
