Bath researchers successfully grow meat on grass
It's thought the process could eventually revolutionise farming
Scientists at the University of Bath have managed to grow meat on grass.
Yes you read that right. It's thought the process could be used in the future both for food and medically to replace tissue lost through injury of disease.
The team behind the work has successfully taken grass from the university’s campus and used it to create a scaffold that animal cells can attach to and grow on, with the study now published in this month’s Journal of Biomedical Materials Research.
The first step in the new bioengineering process involves emptying grass blades of their native cells in a process known as decellularisation.
The decellularised blades are then seeded with a set of cells derived from a mouse cell line (these cells would eventually be replaced by bovine stem cells).
The introduced cells stick to the scaffold’s surface, multiply and form links with neighbouring cells, eventually growing as a cell mass to form new 3D tissue.
Dr Paul De Bank, who led the research, said: “When we were looking for a scaffold for our cells, we wanted to find something that was both sustainable and edible.
"I thought along the lines of a decellularised natural material because cellulose (which grass is largely made of) is edible, but also because grass has aligned grooves that I hoped would allow the cells to line up together to make the fibres we needed – and it worked!”
He added: “When we eat beef, we’re partly eating the grass the cows have grazed on in their lifetime.
"What’s neat about our study is that it shows that we can directly replace the animals with the grass they eat.
"Our system needs to be scaled up but I’m hopeful that sooner rather than later, we could have a meat product on the market based on grass.”
The adhesion of the animal stem cells to the grass surface was found to be around 35 percent, which the University of Bath says is a good result.
“Often, decellularised plant scaffolds need to be chemically modified to get cells to grow on them," De Bank said.
"The great thing we've found with grass is that we get significant adhesion without further processing steps.”
The next big challenge will be scaling up the process so that much more meat can be grown.
A statement from the university says if that is successful, then "one day – consumers may be able to buy grass-reared meat with a clear conscience, free from the environmental and animal-welfare concerns many are wrestling with today."