cancer + meat = inifinite steaks?

[brainhulk]

I mean if they can grow tissue in a petrie dish. why not blow some cigarette smoke on a ribeye to give it cancer. infinite steaks = win

right?

 

[Mike Gayner]

wut?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

This idea would work, but it wouldn't scale up enough to give us alternator sized bulk beef.

 

[ElFenix]

http://www.britishmeat.com/meatnomurder.html

 

[Jeff7]

http://www.britishmeat.com/meatnomurder.html

Coming soon: Sausage dispensers.

 

[Udgnim]

maybe it's just me, but I don't consider eating tumors an appetizing idea

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

maybe it's just me, but I don't consider eating tumors an appetizing idea

You'd make a poor parasite.

 

[Jeff7]

maybe it's just me, but I don't consider eating tumors an appetizing idea

But think of how cool it could be: Order a steak at a restaurant, with free refills - except it refills your plate as you're eating it.

 

[dighn]

maybe it's just me, but I don't consider eating tumors an appetizing idea

grind it up how can you tell? I for one welcome our artificially grown tumor burger overlord.

 

[schneiderguy]

People are already too scared to eat genetically modified food, you really think they'd eat cancer steaks? :hmm:

 

[wetomb]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat

the main problem seems to be getting the cells to form tissue simmilar to muscle tissue

 

[DesiPower]

I mean if they can grow tissue in a petrie dish. why not blow some cigarette smoke on a ribeye to give it cancer. infinite steaks = win

right?

So you want to eat cancer tissues??? you realize they are not same as muscles right?

 

[DaTT]

Only 1 problem with this. It will not replenish itself cooked. Overcome that obstacle and I will be your first guinea pig.

 

[Eli]

Uh... Cancer tissue is not muscle tissue. Have you ever seen cancer? lol

Cancer cells serve no purpose but to grow and divide. They no longer perform their intended function. Hence why you end up dead if you have too many cancer cells. lol

 

[nonameo]

The problem with in vitro meat is that you can still argue cruelty to animals since it has to be seeded with real cells from a real animal.

 

[Eli]

The problem with in vitro meat is that you can still argue cruelty to animals since it has to be seeded with real cells from a real animal.

That's recockulous. I have no idea how they will end up doing in vitro meat, but I would imagine theoretically, you could get enough cells for perhaps hundreds of thousands of starts with a simple needle prick.

Maybe it will even advance to where all you need is a swab of the animal's mouth or something, too.

 

[Nox51]

While continuously growing a culture of cells for consumption is indeed possible, do not make the mistake it will resemble anything like the steak you had last night. It won't have the characteristic programming needed to generate a "steak".

Will it be nutritious? Yes. Will it taste like steak? Probably not.

 

[destrekor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat

the main problem seems to be getting the cells to form tissue simmilar to muscle tissue

I truly wonder if that will end up being a forced-issue and become the standard way of meat consumption (and then real farmed meat would be like a super-expensive delicacy - like, something twice the cost of the most expensive meat from cattle, Kobe Beef/Wagyu)...
I'm glad that by the time that could possibly prove true, I'll be quite elderly and likely suffer from a reduced taste sense.

 

[cronos]

Only 1 problem with this. It will not replenish itself cooked. Overcome that obstacle and I will be your first guinea pig.

Eww. We're no cannibals! D:

 

[Eli]

While continuously growing a culture of cells for consumption is indeed possible, do not make the mistake it will resemble anything like the steak you had last night. It won't have the characteristic programming needed to generate a "steak".

Will it be nutritious? Yes. Will it taste like steak? Probably not.

What programming would they have, then? Wouldn't it be easiest to just use the cells' native programming?

I'm sure we could even make the meat grow bones if we wanted to.

I'm sure it would taste different, because of the different source of energy though, yeah. Who knows, maybe the quality of the meat would overshadow any slight taste differences?

Obviously we can't do these things yet, but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. It will probably start more simply first.. like lunch meat. Then they can hopefully get it to grow thicker, and then add features like perfect marbling, bones, etc..

Here's an interesting thought: What if we were able to grow cows.. without a head? LOL.. I'm sure PETA would have a field day with that.

Of course, anything like that is far beyond our current capabilities. If we are ever able to "decode" mammalian brains' signals, the next logical step would be having a computer controlled animal.

I, for one, welcome our future headless half-cyborg bovine food supply.

 

[Nox51]

What programming would they have, then? Wouldn't it be easiest to just use the cells' native programming?

I'm sure we could even make the meat grow bones if we wanted to.

I'm sure it would taste different, because of the different source of energy though, yeah. Who knows, maybe the quality of the meat would overshadow any slight taste differences?

Obviously we can't do these things yet, but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. It will probably start more simply first.. like lunch meat. Then they can hopefully get it to grow thicker, and then add features like perfect marbling, bones, etc..

Here's an interesting thought: What if we were able to grow cows.. without a head? LOL.. I'm sure PETA would have a field day with that.

Of course, anything like that is far beyond our current capabilities. If we are ever able to "decode" mammalian brains' signals, the next logical step would be having a computer controlled animal.

I, for one, welcome our future headless half-cyborg bovine food supply.

The Steak is a mixture of different types of muscle, fat, blood vessel and neurone type of cells. Also different kind of steaks have different arrangements of cells to give the texture and taste sough after. Just think of all the different places you can get meat off a cow.

Now you can grow cells on a plate relatively easily. Sadly in most cases they will grow for a couple of generations and then stop. You'll end up with a homogenous mass of just one type. You'll need to modify the cells to keep on growing them. This is possible with partially transformed cells, they are even available for lab experiments...HeLa line of cells going on memory for example. Now you have ample supply of cells but still not a steak, they have followed their cell programming and are just one type of cell.

You could go with stem cells and differentiately differentiate them into different cell type, somehow. Now you have different kinds of cells on a plate that probably will grow for a couple of generations and then stop. Previous problem. And you still lack the architecture of a "Steak". Now thinking off the top of my head you'll need some kind of support to mimic bone, blood supply, some sort of mechanical stimulus to develop the "Steak" and so on. Remember the steak sitting in your plate is a collection of different organ systems that took years to get into the shape they are in under various complex stimuli

 

[destrekor]

The Steak is a mixture of different types of muscle, fat, blood vessel and neurone type of cells. Also different kind of steaks have different arrangements of cells to give the texture and taste sough after. Just think of all the different places you can get meat off a cow.

Now you can grow cells on a plate relatively easily. Sadly in most cases they will grow for a couple of generations and then stop. You'll end up with a homogenous mass of just one type. You'll need to modify the cells to keep on growing them. This is possible with partially transformed cells, they are even available for lab experiments...HeLa line of cells going on memory for example. Now you have ample supply of cells but still not a steak, they have followed their cell programming and are just one type of cell.

You could go with stem cells and differentiately differentiate them into different cell type, somehow. Now you have different kinds of cells on a plate that probably will grow for a couple of generations and then stop. Previous problem. And you still lack the architecture of a "Steak". Now thinking off the top of my head you'll need some kind of support to mimic bone, blood supply, some sort of mechanical stimulus to develop the "Steak" and so on. Remember the steak sitting in your plate is a collection of different organ systems that took years to get into the shape they are in under various complex stimuli

The other issue is the tissues have to actually be used for the physiological function for which they are grown.
Muscle isn't much on it's own, not if it doesn't go through years of natural conditioning - it has to do the job that tissue is programmed for, and for muscle that would be movement of some sort. It's got to have something to drive, which then brings the resistance and tensile strength of the tendons, ligaments and bones.. and that's forgetting the rest of the body that may need to be supported by any particular muscle.
And all that action results in constant tears and repairs. Muscle cells also have memory (in the event of little action for a long period of time, that muscle can get to the original strength capability faster than the time it took to get to that point the first time), but a whole new muscle certainly doesn't start off that way. And then, add in the different types of muscle fibers, and the specific ratio of the two in any given muscle, based on how the individual creature has used the muscles through the course of its lifetime.

I can almost guarantee we'll have perfect lab-grown organs suitable for transplants with every individual, before we have lab-grown cuts of meat that are actually suitable replacements for the natural food supply.

 

[Jeff7]

...
I can almost guarantee we'll have perfect lab-grown organs suitable for transplants with every individual, before we have lab-grown cuts of meat that are actually suitable replacements for the natural food supply.

Agreed. A lot of the benefit of using things like plants and animals for creation of useful food products is that they do it by themselves, and they can do it outside. Stick seeds in the ground, and the plants do the work of converting basic chemicals into a useful fruit or vegetable.

And of course for beef, it's just sperm + egg, and the process gets going on producing a whole cow. Nature takes care of most of the work. You would somehow need vast facilities, which would need to keep the growing muscle tissues supplied with nutrients, remove their waste materials, keep them clean, and allow them to be removed when growth is complete. This operation would need to be competitive with other means of meat production.

Using such technology to grow organs would likely come first, as the medical industry would be more able to handle the high initial costs.

 

[ElFenix]

Agreed. A lot of the benefit of using things like plants and animals for creation of useful food products is that they do it by themselves, and they can do it outside. Stick seeds in the ground, and the plants do the work of converting basic chemicals into a useful fruit or vegetable.

And of course for beef, it's just sperm + egg, and the process gets going on producing a whole cow. Nature takes care of most of the work. You would somehow need vast facilities, which would need to keep the growing muscle tissues supplied with nutrients, remove their waste materials, keep them clean, and allow them to be removed when growth is complete. This operation would need to be competitive with other means of meat production.

i find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
:hmm:

 

[Locut0s]

I've thought of a similar idea before. However instead of cancer which as others said above isn't usually a differentiated cell type, the way muscle and fat cells are in meat, I thought of lab grown meat. The idea here is to genetically engineer "meat plants". That is organisms that draw their sustenance from an artificial source provided by man, some type of nutrient broth, and turns that into pure muscle and fat tissue. These would not be living creatures per say as they would lack EVERYTHING that makes an organism a living entity except the ability to grow muscle and fat tissue. Think of them as "muscle and fat balls". No internal organs or anything, just balls of lab grown meat. This would be FAR more efficient than live animals. I think we are still a ways from being able to engineer something like this though.