Towards a More Realistic In Vitro Meat: The Cross Talk between Adipose and Muscle Cells

Abstract

According to statistics and future predictions, meat consumption will increase in the coming years. Considering both the environmental impact of intensive livestock farming and the importance of protecting animal welfare, the necessity of finding alternative strategies to satisfy the growing meat demand is compelling. Biotechnologies are responding to this demand by developing new strategies for producing meat in vitro. The manufacturing of cultured meat has faced criticism concerning, above all, the practical issues of culturing together different cell types typical of meat that are partly responsible for meat’s organoleptic characteristics. Indeed, the existence of a cross talk between adipose and muscle cells has critical effects on the outcome of the co-culture, leading to a general inhibition of myogenesis in favor of adipogenic differentiation. This review aims to clarify the main mechanisms and the key molecules involved in this cross talk and provide an overview of the most recent and successful meat culture 3D strategies for overcoming this challenge, focusing on the approaches based on farm-animal-derived cells.

Transdifferentiation of fibroblasts into muscle cells to constitute cultured meat with tunable intramuscular fat deposition

“…However, co-culture of different cell types is technically challenging since each cell type grows and differentiates in the specific optimized medium. When different cell types are cultured in the same medium, these culture conditions may be suboptimal for one cell type or the other and result in inefficient cellular growth ( Pallaoro et al, 2023 ). Previous studies have underlined the influence that adipocytes growing near muscle cells can impair myogenesis ( Seo et al, 2019 ; Takegahara et al, 2014 ).…”