Artificial Cell: Lab-Grown Meat

Artificial cells have drawn the attention out of the natural cells nowadays. Many types and forms of artificial cells have been discussed. In 1957, the use of artificial cells has first been discovered; the number of availability of methods in uses has increased. Therefore, we can now composite or use biological substances to construct artificial membranes, produce the types of blood we need and increase compatibility, etc. Artificial cells can become almost all substances, including biological cells, vaccines, hormones, antibodies, antigens, etc.

As the cells are the basis of living things, it is not unusual that the artificial cells have the possibility of applications. There is a lot of potential in artificial cells, and the major use is for medical issues. Artificial cells can now be produced individually; you won’t have to wait for others’ organ donation to treat your liver, kidney, etc. You can be treated by artificial organs. For example, artificial can repair the function of kidney. There are also cells that can make fuels and cells that can absorb the carbon dioxide in the air. As biotechnology develops day-by-day, artificial cells will be improving accordingly.

When people think of meat, they will definitely think of killing animals brutally. One of the reasons why vegetarians don’t eat meat is because killing animals makes them feel bad. However, if there is a way to get fresh meat and consume its nutrients including proteins and iron without killing animals, it would solve the problem. With the developing of technology, it will be common to eat a steak that is produced in a laboratory. Therefore, I will be discussing about the lab-grown meat.

Lab-grown meat is also known as cultured meat, synthetic meat, etc. Artificial cells in lab-grown meat is made by extracting the stem cells from mostly cows and chickens and culturing them in vitro. The next paragraph will explain the history in the developing artificial meat.

The first person who predicted the artificial meat was Winston Churchill. He stated that people should grow the parts that they want in an adequate space, instead of growing the whole chicken and only eating some of its parts. In 2001, a bioengineer named Morris Benjaminson and his co-workers took the muscle tissues from goldfish and submerged it in a vat filled with fetal bovine serum with rich nutrients. They found out that the muscle tissues that were still living could divide and create more muscle cells. They cooked the fish, but nobody actually took a bite. In 2011, a specialist of tissue engineering named Gabor Forgacs from the University of Missouri not only manufactured a sample of artificial muscle, but also ate some of it in public. This shows the feasibility of creating lab-grown meat and its potentials.

The team from Netherlands first visualized using the cow’s stem cells and the muscle tissues to create artificial meat. They cultivated the stem cells of cows in the petri dishes. However, the taste of the artificial meat is really drab. To improve its taste, scientists mixed blood and fat with the original artificial meat, which surprisingly improved its taste and similarity to real meat (Kiger, Patrick J). There are two stages in the process to make lab-grown meat. The first process of how to grow lab-grown meat is harvesting stem cells from cows, taking the muscle cell from it, and culturing it (putting it in an artificial environment and submerging it in amino acids or carbohydrates). The one muscle cell can grow up to trillions of muscle cells. The second process is harvesting myosatellite cells from the muscle tissue of an animal. Then, the scientists differentiate them into muscle cells and they naturally form into small fibers called myotube. When they are placed in a circular centered gel, they start to expand and combine into small pieces of muscle tissues, eventually becoming lab-grown meat.

Scientists can add more proteins and minerals in the meat so that people can ingest more nutrients from the artificial meat. Lab-grown meat can also reduce the risk of virus in the meat.

The first advantage of the lab-grown meat is the resources that we use for the livestock. Livestock eat and drink millions of kilograms of food and gallons of water. Therefore, replacing regular meat with lab-grown meat can significantly reduce the water and food for the livestock, saving the environment greatly.

The second advantage of lab-grown meat is reducing the possibilities of diseases. Livestock will also get diseases. For example, bird flu is a disease that chickens can get. When millions of chickens get bird flu simultaneously, it will definitely be a disaster for the environment. Artificial meat does not have this issue, and the diseases can be noticeably eliminated.

Crops used for feeding livestock take up seventy percent of agricultural land. Therefore, the third advantage of lab-grown meat is the reduction of land used for growing crops for livestock. We could use the land to grow our own crops. Therefore, lab-grown meat is a very good solution for the land that feeding livestock use. We could eat the lab-grown meat instead of livestock to reduce the land designated for livestock’s food.

The first disadvantage of lab-grown meat is the use of energy. The scientists show that producing lab-grown meat will still need a huge amount of energy and heat and it still requires transportation to its buyers, so there will be carbon footprints.

The second disadvantage of replacing regular meat with lab-grown meat is the population of animals originally for eating. Although, we may not have to eat meat from animals, those animals still reproduce. In other words, they will cause an immense impact on the ecosystem due to the limited carrying capacity. To eliminate this problem, we can gradually reduce the man-made reproduction of livestock and switch over to artificial meat.

In conclusion, lab-grown meat will be a potential biotechnology in the future. There are many advantages in lab-grown meat environmentally, but there are also disadvantages. When lab-grown meat becomes more prevalent, it will have both advantages and disadvantages. Reducing livestock can reduce the resources that we have been investing in livestock and also get more spaces. Additionally, the biotechnology isn’t developed thoroughly, and scientists hope that lab-grown meat can be produced faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly in the future. As this technology becomes more and more advanced, we should gradually replace regular meat with artificial meat. Lastly, I agree with lab-grown meat, because we can use the resources that we gave to the livestock in many ways. For example, we can plant more crops for human, but not feeding the livestock.