Cell-based meat is an emerging technology that contains isolated cultured livestocks cells and alternative proteins (commonly plant-based proteins). These two components can be combined into a food matrix as edible scaffolds or micro-carriers during cell production and product formulation to generate whole foods for human consumption. Cell-based meat development is driven by the need to have alternative protein sources to traditional livestock meat to address growing meat consumption, livestock associated environmental degradation, animal welfare concerns, optimised human nutrition, food safety, product cost, and scalability factors (Post et al., 2020).
Combining edible structured scaffolds or micro-carriers made from plant-based proteins with cultured livestock cells will produce novel food matrices that could improve the organoleptic properties of plant-based protein foods, while decreasing the cost of cell-based meat. Scaffolds and micro-carriers serve as supportive networks which allow for increased surface-to-volume ratio, cell adhesion, provide guidance for cell proliferation, differentiation, and organisation, and facilitate transport of oxygen and nutrients.
Understanding the matrix interactions between plant-based proteins and cultivated livestock cells is central to developing successful cell-based meats. Achieving desirable consumer properties is only possible by understanding the food matrix structure. Currently, there is little understanding of what influence these interactions have on the overall biophysical properties of hybrid cultivated meat matrices, which affects the appearance, taste, texture, and nutritional profile - all desirable consumer properties.
Our research explores plant-based scaffolds and micro-carriers as systems to make cell-based meats and investigates the effect protein-protein interactions have on food matrix structures and the organoleptic properties of cell-based meats. We utilise physical cross-linking methods during development to alter the inter- and intramolecular protein networks to avoid the use of chemical cross-linkers, a promising technique for food safe production.
By investigating novel scaffold and micro-carrier systems for cell growth we will develop fundamental understanding of the interactions and gene expression of relevant proteins for future studies investigating the applicability of a wider range of food-grade protein materials for use in cell-based meat production (Domigan et al., 2022).