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The idea

This year, the team focused on a project that could impact industry and research but also the eating habits of the general public by trying to improve several characteristics of FGF2. This protein is an essential growth factor used for the process of cultivating meat. Overall the team aimed to improve the protein’s binding affinity to FGF receptors, thermostability, resistance to trypsin degradation, and solubility to increase the yield obtained from an E. coli expression system.

Three different versions of the bovine FGF2 were developed to test if these characteristics could be enhanced. Ultimately, they would be combined in one single “super” FGF2 which would have increased receptor affinity, hyperstability and reduced degradation while allowing large-scale production with high yields. The team believed that through the use of synthetic biology, these enhancements were possible and that they would prove to be a good application of synthetic biology.

Figure 1. Summary of the areas affected by engineered FGF2. These are the industry (bioreactor), the environment (cow holding the planet), the general public (people), and possible concerns when it comes to safety of the product (approved steak).

The impact in the industry

This improved protein could potentially be produced in large-scale bioreactors under optimized conditions which would allow for a reduction in its price. This was one of our goals since upscaling is one of the options suggested to reduce the price of FGF2 [1]. This would, in turn, make FGF2 more accessible to cultivated meat companies.

Moreover, after acquiring the “super” growth factor, companies in the field of cellular agriculture would be able to use it in their serum-free medium for the production of cultivated meat [2]. The properties of the growth factor would allow the companies to use lower amounts of it and hopefully still achieve the same level of cell proliferation seen with the commercially available FGF2. This would decrease costs drastically. The increased affinity, hyperstability and reduced degradation could potentially even increase the cell replication speed which would make the cultivated meat production faster and further reduce the costs [1]. This is because the increased affinity would allow the growth factor to bind to its receptors more efficiently which would result in stronger cell signaling and therefore more cells growing with a faster rate[3]. The hyperstability and the reduced degradation would allow the growth factor to be active for longer and bind more receptors during the time that it is active. It would also facilitate FGF2’s production since the growth factor would be degraded at a lower rate until it is used on growth media which would increase the overall yield of active FGF2. This would reduce the amount of growth factor needed to produce the cell proliferation levels seen with a standard amount of commercially available FGF2 [1].

In the end, the improved growth factor would be a big step in a direction that would allow cultivated meat companies and maybe even private individuals to produce a less expensive, disease-free, and slaughter-free meat.

The impact on the environment

By allowing cultivated meat to be more easily accessible, the improved growth factor could have an immense positive impact on the environment. Due to its potential to strengthen the field of cultivated meat, it could potentially challenge the industrial meat production which is, as we know, partly responsible for climate change because of the green-house gases produced by cattle. By reducing the need for cattle, an improvement in the cellular agriculture field would also reduce the amount of land deforested or used to grow feed for cattle [4]. This would mean that more land would be available to grow crops to feed humans or to serve as natural habitats for wildlife.

Another way in which an improved growth factor in cultivated meat could help the environment, is by reducing the need for antibiotics in meat production. Due to the sterility necessary to grow safe meat cells in a bioreactor, the use of antibiotics in meat cultivation might still need to be used [5] but it would be much less compared to the amount of these antimicrobials used in traditional meat production [6]. The use of less antibiotics would reduce the odds of spills which are responsible for the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment [7].

The impact in the life of the general public

When cultivating meat one can choose which cells to grow and therefore which kind of meat one wants to produce [8]. We think that this allows for endless possibilities when it comes to meat production by making meat much more accessible to everyone. In places where the climate does not allow for raising many heads of cattle, this could be a valid solution to ensure a reliable supply of meat. Also, by being able to select and control the cells that one wants to grow, highly nutritious cuts of meat with, for example, omega 6 fatty acids instead of saturated fats could be cultivated which would greatly benefit the health of consumers. Finally, people could use a meat bioreactor to produce higher or lower quality meat depending on their needs without putting an immense pressure on the environment, regardless of the consumers’ location.

This improved growth factor can also impact the public’s health through regenerative medicine. This is probably not the main purpose of the improvement of bovine FGF2, but the truth is that these same improvements can very likely be applied to human FGF2 or other human growth factors which could mean faster and more efficient regeneration of human tissues.

Safety and other possible challenges

Since the enhanced growth factor would be used to produce edible organic material, its production would have to assure that it is pure enough to not pose itself as a possible danger to the consumer. Moreover, the proliferation of mammalian cells might require the use of antibiotics to prevent the contamination of the culture by microorganisms [5]. This means that certain safety measures need to be taken to prevent antibiotic spills into the environment but also to assure that the cultivated meat has no traces of antibiotic when it is made available for the consumer.

References

[1] “Cultivated meat: Cell culture medium costs | Analysis | GFI.” https://gfi.org/resource/analyzing-cell-culture-medium-costs/ (accessed Sep. 20, 2021).

[2] A. M. Kolkmann, M. J. Post, M. a. M. Rutjens, A. L. M. van Essen, and P. Moutsatsou, “Serum-free media for the growth of primary bovine myoblasts,” Cytotechnology, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 111–120, Feb. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10616-019-00361-y.

[3] D. M. Ornitz et al., “Receptor specificity of the fibroblast growth factor family,” J. Biol. Chem., vol. 271, no. 25, pp. 15292–15297, Jun. 1996, doi: 10.1074/jbc.271.25.15292.

[4] H. L. Tuomisto and M. J. Teixeira de Mattos, “Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production,” Environ. Sci. Technol., vol. 45, no. 14, pp. 6117–6123, Jul. 2011, doi: 10.1021/es200130u.

[5] foodnavigator-usa.com, “Cell-based meat cos: Please stop calling us ‘lab-grown’ meat… and we don’t use antibiotics in full-scale production,” foodnavigator-usa.com. https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2018/10/25/Cell-based-meat-cos-Please-stop-calling-us-lab-grown-meat-and-we-don-t-use-antibiotics-in-full-scale-production (accessed Sep. 20, 2021).

[6] M. J. Martin, S. E. Thottathil, and T. B. Newman, “Antibiotics Overuse in Animal Agriculture: A Call to Action for Health Care Providers,” Am. J. Public Health, vol. 105, no. 12, pp. 2409–2410, Dec. 2015, doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302870.

[7] “UN, global health agencies sound alarm on drug-resistant infections; new recommendations to reduce ‘staggering number’ of future deaths,” UN News, Apr. 29, 2019. https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/04/1037471 Sep. 20, 2021).