Cell-Based Fish: A Novel Approach to Seafood Production and an Opportunity for Cellular Agriculture

Abstract

Cellular agriculture is defined as the production of agricultural products from cell cultures rather than from whole plants or animals. With growing interest in cellular agriculture as a means to address the public health, environmental, and animal welfare challenges of animal agriculture, the concept of producing seafood from fish cell- and tissue-cultures is emerging as a means to address similar challenges with industrial aquaculture systems and marine capture. Cell-based seafood - as opposed to animal-based seafood - can combine developments in biomedical engineering with modern aquaculture techniques. Biomedical engineering developments such as closed-system bioreactor production of land animal cells create a basis for large scale production of marine animal cells. Aquaculture techniques such as genetic modification and closed system aquaculture have achieved marked gains in production that can pave the way for innovations in cell-based seafood production. Here, we present the current state of innovation relevant to the development of cell-based seafood across multiple species as well as specific opportunities and challenges that exist for advancing this science. The authors find that the physiological properties of fish cell- and tissue- culture may be uniquely suited to cultivation in vitro. These physiological properties, including hypoxia tolerance, high buffering capacity, and low-temperature growth conditions, make marine cell culture an attractive opportunity for scale production of cell-based seafood; perhaps even more so than mammalian and avian cell cultures for cell-based meats. This, coupled with the unique capabilities of crustacean tissue-friendly scaffolding such as chitosan, a common seafood waste product and mushroom derivative, presents great promise for cell-based seafood production via bioreactor cultivation. To become fully realized, cell-based seafood research will require more understanding of fish muscle culture and cultivation; more investigation into serum-free media formulations optimized for fish cell culture; and bioreactor designs tuned to the needs of fish cells for large scale production.

Role and relevance of fish cell lines in advanced in vitro research

“…Tissue engineering blend with modern aquaculture techniques can be explored to utilize marine cell culture as an attractive opportunity for the production of in vitro fish meat. Fish muscle cell culture can be used for in vitro fish meat production by exploiting their salient physiological properties like tolerance to a hypoxic-conditions, high buffering capacity, and lower temperature [ 2 ]. Fish muscle cell cultures are more adaptable to in vitro conditions than mammalian ones and hence in vitro meat production will be more feasible with fish muscle cell cultures.…”

“…A better understanding of the myogenesis involved in the muscle cell and tissue culture would be essential to trap the benefits of muscle cell culture in promoting cellular aquaculture. In vitro models like C2C12 cell lines have been utilized in understanding molecular mechanisms underlying muscle growth and differentiation in mammals [ 2 ]. Such studies are in the infancy stage in teleost due to the unavailability of equivalent permanent muscle cell lines except for a few fish muscle cell lines [ 75 – 77 , 77 ].…”

“…Their cell line could be useful for providing basic insights into growth, reproduction, and health, creating opportunities for manipulation and thus the cell lines could be used as sources of biochemical products in place of the whole organism [ 1 ]. Cell-based aquaculture systems using cell cultures could be a game-changing practice to produce seafood and other aqua food across multiple species for meeting the demand of the burgeoning world population [ 2 ]. A cell-based aqua food production system utilizing cells in place of whole fish could also lead to greater preservation of the aquatic environments.…”

Precision cellular agriculture: The future role of recombinantly expressed protein as food

“…Cellular agriculture in the context of cultured meat also borrows much of the technology needed to grow in vitro meat from stem and tissue culturing techniques (Post et al, 2020). Recently, reviews dedicated to the production, regulation, and social aspects of cultured meat (including fish) have been published in increasing numbers (Choudhury et al, 2020;Jairath et al, 2021;Mattick, 2018;Post et al, 2020;Rubio et al, 2019;Singh et al, 2022;Stephens et al, 2018;Wood & Tavan, 2022).…”