Production of mature myotubes in vitro improves the texture and protein quality of cultured pork

Abstract

Cultured meat technology provides a promising strategy for the production of meat protein, which is an important nutrient in daily life.

Sculpting the future of meat: Biomaterial approaches and structural engineering for large‐scale cell‐based production

“…Ben‐Arye and colleagues reported the use of a textured soy protein scaffold which is an edible and porous biomaterial that offers a supportive and structured scaffold for muscle tissue growth (Ben‐Arye et al, 2020). Similar results were found with pork satellite cells in a textured vegetable protein (TVP) scaffold with a serum‐free culture medium (Guan et al, 2023). This method reduced the cost of production as the TVP contributed to a large portion of the protein content in the cell‐based meat, however, it may also lead to a relatively lower meaty flavor compared to real meat as most cell growth is on the surface of the scaffold.…”

“…Therefore, companies have existing production pipelines that are commercially viable for cell‐based meat production, reducing the costs of initial capital and ingredients. The technology of plant‐based meats can assist in stimulating better meaty textures, the complexity of optimizing these methods for cell‐based meats mainly lies in scaffold designs and co‐culturing of cells in texturized scaffold and has been demonstrated at a lab‐scale (Ben‐Arye et al, 2020; Guan et al, 2023).…”

“…Adult stem cells from livestock such as pigs and cattle are favorable choices in the research community due to their inducible differentiation capacity, well-defined isolation methods despite having a finite number of cell divisions, and evidence that mature myofibers can improve the meaty flavor of cell-based meats (Guan et al, 2023). Conversely, pluripotent stem cells boast an unlimited proliferation potential and can be differentiated into various cell types, however, they are complicated to culture and costly to isolate (Reiss et al, 2021).…”

“…Immortal cell lines minimize the need for continual animal biopsies. The C2C12 murine myoblast cell line has been extensively used as a model cell line in cell‐based meats to evaluate biomaterial performance and as a proof of concept (Andreassen et al, 2022; Choi et al, 2023; Furuhashi et al, 2021; Guan et al, 2023; Ikeda & Takeuchi, 2019; Kong et al, 2022; Kong & Huang, 2023; Li et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2022; Norris et al, 2022; Okamoto et al, 2022; Tzimorotas et al, 2023; Wei et al, 2023; Xiang et al, 2022). Cell‐based meats that are food‐safe and commercially available will be made from culinarily appropriate animal cells derived from animals such as cows, pigs, fish, and chickens.…”

“…Further work to eliminate the use of serum, has identified surface receptors using RNA‐sequencing at the early stages of differentiation and has allowed for the development of an optimized serum‐free medium for BSC differentiation (Messmer et al, 2022). Understanding and optimizing the culturing of satellite cells can provide fully differentiated cells with higher protein levels and can improve meat texture compared to immature myotubes (Guan et al, 2023). Similarly, the total lipid content is higher, and the triglyceride composition is closer to the native subcutaneous fat of fully matured adipocytes (Dohmen et al, 2022).…”