Technology
What is cellular agriculture? What are the current technologies? And how exactly is food produced by cells?
Biomass Fermentation
Biomass fermentation leverages the rapid growth cycle and high protein content of many fungi to efficiently produce large quantities of protein.
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It all begins with one spore, which is inoculated and put into a bioreactor. From this point, the fungi is fed a mixture of carbohydrates, oxygen, and nutrients, and mixed for approximately 30 days to ferment and grow.
Once the fungi has grown a matrix of mycelium in the bioreactor, the product is separated, cooked, and dried. The final product is a mass of protein-rich, filamentous mycelium, ready to be shaped and flavored for a wide variety of applications.
Precision Fermentation
Precision Fermentation uses microbes as "hosts" to produce a multitude of functional food ingredients.
This advanced technology enables the programming of micro-organisms such as yeast and algae to produce complex organic molecules which are traditionally only found in animals. These include things like casein, a protein found in dairy products, or albumin, the primary protein in egg whites.
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These micro-organisms are fermented in the same reactors used for biomass fermentation, but the result is a byproduct of the fermentation process, not the mycelial biomass produced by the fermentation itself.
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Precision fermentation is an advanced and groundbreaking technology that enables today's scientists to create cheese without cows, eggs without chickens, and enzymes without animals.
Cultivated Meat
Cultivated meat, also known as cultured meat, is real, animal meat, produced without the animal.
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The process begins with animal stem cells, which are nurtured and grown inside bioreactors. Similar to the inside of an animal's body, these reactors are fueled by oxygen and basic nutrients such as amino acids, glucose, and vitamins to encourage the cells to grow.
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These cells grow, differentiate, and multiply into what is eventually a direct analog of animal muscle. Cultivated meat produces real beef without the cow and real pork without the pig.