Can salmon be grown using cells? There is a new choice for future food!

If one day people were to live on the uninhabited moon, what would they eat? Cell-cultured fish meat might be a good choice.

Recently, a reporter followed the "Zhejiang University Serving Zhejiang's High-Quality Development" media research trip and walked into the Future Food Laboratory of the Yangtze River Delta Smart Oasis Innovation Center of Zhejiang University. In the container, he saw a piece of "fish meat" that was not from salmon. This piece of meat was cultured from stem cells, with orange and white color, elasticity, and a fishy smell, which is almost exactly the same as the same natural fish.

Cell cultured salmon Source: Provided by the interviewee

How do stem cells become meat? Chen Qihe, a professor at the School of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science at Zhejiang University, explained that using cells to culture fish meat is essentially a process of creating suitable nutrition and environmental conditions in vitro through animal stem cells for cell proliferation and differentiation. "Fish meat cultured from stem cells is called 'alternative protein'. In theory, the nutritional content and flavor of cell-cultured fish meat are almost the same as those of natural fish of the same species."

"Not all stem cells can be isolated. The team screened hundreds of stem cells and spent nearly a year before finding the right stem cells for culture." Chen Qihe told reporters that the cell cultivation methods for different meats are similar. The difficulty in culturing and isolating stem cells lies in finding a suitable cell line and constructing an efficient proliferation and differentiation culture medium, which is equivalent to the relationship between seeds and soil.

Taking salmon as an example, researchers need to screen and isolate muscle stem cells and fat stem cells from salmon as the "seeds" for cell culture of fish meat, and then place the stem cells into the prepared culture medium "soil".

"Salmon has very strict nutritional requirements for the culture medium, and the temperature for cell differentiation must be maintained at around 20 degrees Celsius." Chen Qihe introduced that they designed a reactor suitable for fish stem cell culture, which provides suitable "soil" for cell differentiation through carbon dioxide and temperature control.

3D printed salmon Source: Provided by the interviewee

As muscle cells grow and differentiate, more and more "fish meat" is produced, but at this time the "fish meat" is only in the form of "meat paste" and cannot be called real fish meat. How to "build" the fish meat structure? The research team combined materials science and 3D printing technology to build a digital structural model of raw fish blocks. Muscle cells will grow regularly along the 3D printed bionic structure to form three-dimensional cultured muscle fiber bundles, producing a structure and texture similar to natural fish meat.

It is reported that the production of 3D printing materials is not an easy task. The research team achieved bionic growth by screening suitable materials, adjusting the formula, lowering the printing temperature, and finding edible colloidal materials that can firmly "grasp" myoblasts.

Behind the cell culture salmon, there is a global team involved in the exploration and research. In addition to the School of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science of Zhejiang University, there are also researchers from the School of Life Sciences, the School of Mechanical Engineering, and the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University. The entire team has nearly 30 people, including 6 professors and 4 national talents.

Researchers are doing experiments. Source: provided by the interviewee

At present, this research has obtained more than 20 patents. At the appraisal meeting organized by the China Light Industry Federation, the key technology of biosynthetic cell cultured fish meat was recognized by the evaluation team as reaching the international advanced level in the same field.

"Before cell-cultured fish meat can reach the table, it still needs to undergo rigorous safety assessments, as well as third-party evaluation and appraisal, and must undergo strict ethical evaluations. I believe that as technology continues to advance, it will be able to be mass-produced in the foreseeable future." Chen Qihe said that this technology will provide new ideas for cultivating high-quality protein using cells from different fish and even other economic animals in the future. It is also of great significance to the protection of marine fish resources and the ecological environment, and is also an important practical exploration of new quality productivity.

How much does it cost for an average person to eat a piece of salmon like this? Chen Qihe said that its production cost needs to be significantly reduced to meet the requirements of commercialization and marketization. However, he believes that cell-cultured meat is more important as a forward-looking technology layout to prevent problems before they occur.

"Next, the research team will further deepen key technology research around reducing costs and ensuring safety to prepare for large-scale production," said Chen Qihe.

In 2013, a cooking live broadcast in London, England, attracted people's attention to cell-cultured meat products.

At that time, a professor at a Dutch university extracted special stem cells from a cow's neck, completed the world's first in vitro cultured cell-cultured meat, and showed it to the public.

In the past two years, there have been news reports that the United States and Singapore have also approved the sale of cell-cultured chicken.

In November 2019, Zhou Guanghong's team released the first cell-cultured pork in China. In the same year, a technology company with Zhou Guanghong as chief scientist was registered and established.

Last March, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization released a global report titled "Food Safety Issues of Cell-Based Foods." The report pointed out that the world's population is expected to reach 9 billion to 11 billion by 2050, with the accompanying increase in protein demand and potential health and environmental issues.

In the future, cell-cultured meat is considered to be one of the most promising technologies for solving the supply of meat and protein on human tables and reducing the high dependence of artificially farmed meat animals on water and land resources.

Cell cultured meat technology may reshape the industry in the future. In other words, the edible meat of the future will be partly produced by animal husbandry, partly obtained through cell culture, and partly simulated meat made from plant protein.