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The culture of meat in the laboratory opens up a field of possibilities such that one could even imagine eating a mammoth. It’s not a joke at all. Thanks to the DNA of the prehistoric animal, an Australian company has managed to make dumplings from it.
This is probably the most surprising food innovation since we launched this “what the food” audio series. Why couldn’t we eat mammoth since our ancestors hunted it? Because he disappeared of course, you will answer. Except that scientists have the DNA of the prehistoric animal, whose remains are still found in the Arctic. According to CNNexcavations have made it possible to sequence the genome of the mammoth.
At the Australian Institute of Bioengineering at the University of Queensland, researchers have used it to recreate muscle proteins. Specifically, they extracted a DNA sequence present in myoglobin to create meat tissue in the laboratory. To complete this development, the scientists used elephant DNA to perfect what looks like mammoth meatballs. With the approach of April 1st, one might have thought it was a joke. And yet, it is very real. This is new research carried out as part of the development of in-vitro meat. The Australian company (Vow), which led this project, intends to demonstrate the growth potential of this booming sector. Above all, she wants to prove that we can make laboratory meat without resorting to any slaughter. The challenge of this foodtech is indeed to dispense with fetal bovine serum taken from pregnant cows sent to the slaughterhouse. The pieces of meat created under a microscope are often composed of cells that can only develop if they are fed with this elixir.
In the case of this Australian start-up, we start from the premise that we can eat any meat as long as we do not kill the animals. This is why some fifty species have been the subject of research, from the peacock to the crocodile, including the alpaca. Vow’s lab, for example, has developed quail meat from Japan, which it plans to distribute in Singapore this year.
Originally, the project planned to develop a recipe for dodo meat, the famous large bird that disappeared at the end of the 17th century. But scientists do not have the DNA of this endemic species of Mauritius, which led to redefining a plan to focus more on the mammoth. In an interview given to Guardian, the boss of Vow confided that working woolly mammoth meat was also interesting for the symbol that it represented. The species is indeed emblematic of these animals that disappeared under the effect of global warming, after the ice age. However, the scientific manager of the project explained that these mammoth pellets were not intended to be eaten by humans, quite simply for a question of health safety. We do not know its allergenic potential insofar as the protein which made it possible to produce this meat was extinct for 5,000 years.
However, this research does not fail to make the buzz. This is not the first time that a foodtech company has taken an interest in original animal species to create in-vitro meat. Last year, a New York start-up communicated about its research to develop tiger, elephant, giraffe or zebra meat.