Researchers active in the food sector on Tuesday demonstrated a giant meatball made from meat obtained in a laboratory from mammoth cells. The event took place at the Nemo Science Museum in Amsterdam and Australian artificial meat company Vow displayed the meatball under a glass bell.
Proteins of the past showed the way for future foods, scientists said during the presentation, but to be able to try mammoth meat we’ll have to wait longer: Millennium-old proteins require safety tests before humans today can do so. suck them up.
“We chose woolly mammoth meat because it is a symbol of the damage caused by past climate changes” that wiped out the animal, explained Tim Noakesmith, co-founder of Vow. Noakesmith added that we risk “meeting a similar fate if we don’t do things differently, including changing practices such as large-scale farming and the way we eat.”
The meat was cultured over several weeks by the scientists who first identified the DNA sequence of mammoth myoglobin, a key protein that gives meat its flavour. By filling in some gaps in the mammoth’s myoglobin sequence with genes from the African elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative, it was then inserted into sheep’s cells using an electric charge.
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