What if the meatballs were made from woolly mammoths? The synthetic meat from the giant extinct 5 thousand years ago
They recovered the DNA of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the large proboscidean with long curved tusks extinct 5 thousand years ago, they completed it with that of its closest contemporary relative - the elephant - and they cultivated its muscle protein in the laboratory making it grow in myoblastic stem cells, progenitors of muscle cells of a sheep. All this in a couple of weeks and with the potential goal - between activism, provocation and new concrete frontiers of meat production - of churning out meatballs and other meat-based products cultured meat of an animal that has now disappeared from the face of the Earth for millennia.
The incredible experiment gives an account of the Guardian with an exclusive with which he explains the path, actually unexpectedly short, taken by Vow, an Australian company which - like many competitors and startups in the world, with different approaches - is riding what many call "protein transitionIn other words: how to feed the world with cheap proteins but gradually abandoning the deadly system of intensive farming and slaughterhouses, now unsustainable from every point of view? products of plant originwith different protein isolation procedures.
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Others, however, are precisely betting on artificially grown meat starting from the reproduction inside special bioreactors to form fibers and fabrics and thus be used for the production of meat. A mechanism that has yet to scale and of which there is currently only one example on the market (the artificial chicken by Good Meat sold to Singapore) but which promises to drastically cut the consumption of water, soil and environmental resources for feed. In addition to solving the basic ethical dilemma of intensive farming: to give birth, to gorge at an accelerated pace and in nightmarish conditions, billions of living beings every year in order to kill them to feed us.
There meatball of the extinct mammoth it is therefore and above all a manifesto of activism, as well as what some would call proof of concept, i.e. prototype, proof that that road is possible. Vow, in particular, aims to produce this type of meat from less conventional species for the experiments in progress: it is no coincidence that it has already probed the possibility of over 50 species, from alpacas to buffaloes, from crocodiles to kangaroos, from peacocks to various types of fish. At the moment, there is still nothing on the market but synthetic meat by the end of the year Japanese quail it should end up on sale in some restaurants in Singapore, which is evidently more open than others to the marketing of these products.
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"We have a behavior change problem when it comes to meat consumption," he explained George Pepou, CEO of Vow, to the British newspaper - the goal is to switch a few billion meat consumers from consuming conventional animal proteins to consuming products that can be made in electrified systems. We believe the best way to do this is by 'inventing' meat. We look for cells that are easy to grow, really tasty and nutritious, and then mix and match those cells to make really attractive meat."
But why the woolly mammoth, evolution of the steppe mammoth and lived in the Pleistocene? "We chose the woolly mammoth because it's a symbol of loss of diversity and climate change - he added Tim Noeaksmithco-founder of Vow - the creature is thought to have been driven to extinction by human hunting and global warming after the last ice age". In short, there could not have been a more "symbolic" species in this respect.
The idea has an inevitable cultural marketing appeal. It is no coincidence that among the creators of the operation there is also Bas Korsten of the Wunderman Thompson creative agency according to which the aim is precisely to stimulate "a conversation on how we eat and on how future alternatives can be and taste. Cultured meat is meat, but not as we know it."
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The experiment was conducted with help from the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering. In particular with Ernst Wolvetang, who from the available DNA fragments of the woolly mammoth took the sequence that coded for the myoglobin, the muscle protein responsible for the flavor and texture of the meat, as mentioned by "fixing" the missing pieces with the DNA of a contemporary elephant. An "easy and quick" job, commented the expert, completed in a couple of weeks. The hypothesis of churning out dodo meat, the mythical columbiform bird of Mauritius which became extinct in the second half of the seventeenth century after the Portuguese and Dutch colonizers landed on the island, has instead collided with the fact that we do not have adequate DNA sequences for this mission.
But what do mammoth meatballs taste like? For now, the creators are walking with lead feet and no one has yet tasted the meat samples of the extinct giant. "We haven't experienced this protein for thousands of years, so we have no idea how our own would react," Wolvetang said. immune system when we eat it. But if we did it again, we could certainly do it in a way that makes it assessable by regulatory bodies". we are used to, another those of extinct species. But, again, the path seems feasible. In the meantime, perhaps, it is better to focus on the replication of meat from species whose breeding poisons the planet and aggravates the climate crisis. Vow, for his part, it also avoids the use of animal bovine serum for laboratory cultures and has already raised over $56 million in funding.
