The world’s first 3D-printed Wagyu beef has been revealed by scientists, who say it has marbling ‘just like the real thing’ and is grown from stem cells in the lab.
Most ‘cultured’ meat produced so far has come out like mince rather than steak, composed of simple muscle fibres rather than more complex structures.
However, steaks – particularly from delicate Waygu beef – contain fat, muscle and blood vessels in an intricate structure producing a marbling effect, and this is what the team from Osaka University was able to replicate using 3D printing techniques.
‘This work may help usher in a more sustainable future with widely available cultured meat,’ that is closer to existing products, says study author Dong-Hee Kang.
The team gave no indication on eventual cost of producing the steaks or how long it would take for the product to reach the market.
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The world’s first 3D-printed Wagyu beef has been revealed by scientists, who say it has marbling ‘just like the real thing’ and is grown from stem cells in the lab
The world’s population is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, and with that will come an increasing demand on food, particularly for protein rich foods like beef, according to ‘lab-grown wagyu’ developers from Osaka University in Japan. Stock image of Wagyu beef
Wagyu can be translated as ‘Japanese cow’ in English, and is one of the most famous meats in the world for its high content of ‘intramuscular fat’ and marbling.
It is this marbling effect that provides the rich flavour that also makes it one of the most expensive steaks on the market.
However, current cattle farming techniques considered unsustainable, particularly in terms of climate change emissions, which is one thing driving increased demand for plant-based alternatives and research into cultured meat products like this.
‘Currently available “cultured meat” is made of poorly organised muscle fibre cells that fail to reproduce the complex structure of real beef steaks,’ the team said.
The Japanese team created a new 3D-printing method that was was produced in a way that is similar to that used to make Kintaro candy – a very old traditional sweet formed in a long pipe and cut into slices, with each slice showing the face of Kintaro (Golden Boy), a Japanese folk hero.
Their method creates different fibrous tissues such as muscle, fat, and blood vessels by 3D printing and integrating them.
This produced ‘synthetic meat that looks more like the real thing,’ according to the study authors, who say it could be used to produce other complex structures.
The team started with two types of stem cells, called bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells (cells from body fat).
Under the right laboratory conditions, these ‘multipotent’ cells can be coaxed to turn into every type of cell needed to produce the cultured meat.
Individual fibres including muscle, fat, or blood vessels were fabricated from these cells using bioprinting.
The fibres were then arranged in three dimensions, following the histological structure, to reproduce the structure of the real Wagyu meat, which was finally sliced perpendicularly, in a similar way to the traditional Japanese candy.
This process made the reconstruction of the complex meat tissue structure possible in a customisable manner.
To try and tackle this increased demand, a number of researchers are working on cultured, or lab-grown meat, produced from stem cells from different animals
‘By improving this technology, it will be possible to not only reproduce complex meat structures, but to also make subtle adjustments to the fat and muscle components,’ said senior author Michiya Matsusaki.
That is, customers would be able to order cultured meat with their desired amount of fat, based on taste and health considerations.
The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.