TY - JOUR
T1 - Growing meat on autoclaved vegetables with biomimetic stiffness and micro-patterns
AU - Liu, Ye
AU - Gao, Anqi
AU - Wang, Tiantian
AU - Zhang, Yongqian
AU - Zhu, Gaoxiang
AU - Ling, Sida
AU - Wu, Zhaozhao
AU - Jin, Yuhong
AU - Chen, Haoke
AU - Lai, Yuming
AU - Zhang, Rui
AU - Yang, Yuchen
AU - Han, Jianyong
AU - Deng, Yulin
AU - Du, Yanan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2025/12
Y1 - 2025/12
N2 - Cultured meat needs edible bio-scaffolds that provide not only a growth milieu for muscle and adipose cells, but also biomimetic stiffness and tissue-sculpting topography. Current meat-engineering technologies struggle to achieve scalable cell production, efficient cell differentiation, and tissue maturation in one single culture system. Here we propose an autoclaving strategy to transform common vegetables into muscle- and adipose-engineering scaffolds, without undergoing conventional plant decellularization. We selected vegetables with natural anisotropic and isotropic topology mimicking muscle and adipose microstructures respectively. We further adjusted vegetable stiffness by autoclaving, to emulate the mechanical properties of animal tissues. Autoclaved vegetables preserve rich cell-affinitive moieties, yielding a good cell culture effect with simplified processing. Autoclaved Chinese chive and Shiitake mushroom with anisotropic micro-patterns support the scalable expansion of muscle cells, improved cell alignment and myogenesis. Autoclaved isotropic loofah encourages adipocyte proliferation and lipid accumulation. Our engineered muscle- and fat-on-vegetables can further construct meat stuffing or layered meat chips. Autoclaved vegetables possess tissue-mimicking stiffness and topology, and bring biochemical benefits, operational ease, cost reduction and bioreactor compatibility. Without needing decellularization, these natural biomaterials may see scale-up applications in meat analog bio-fabrication.
AB - Cultured meat needs edible bio-scaffolds that provide not only a growth milieu for muscle and adipose cells, but also biomimetic stiffness and tissue-sculpting topography. Current meat-engineering technologies struggle to achieve scalable cell production, efficient cell differentiation, and tissue maturation in one single culture system. Here we propose an autoclaving strategy to transform common vegetables into muscle- and adipose-engineering scaffolds, without undergoing conventional plant decellularization. We selected vegetables with natural anisotropic and isotropic topology mimicking muscle and adipose microstructures respectively. We further adjusted vegetable stiffness by autoclaving, to emulate the mechanical properties of animal tissues. Autoclaved vegetables preserve rich cell-affinitive moieties, yielding a good cell culture effect with simplified processing. Autoclaved Chinese chive and Shiitake mushroom with anisotropic micro-patterns support the scalable expansion of muscle cells, improved cell alignment and myogenesis. Autoclaved isotropic loofah encourages adipocyte proliferation and lipid accumulation. Our engineered muscle- and fat-on-vegetables can further construct meat stuffing or layered meat chips. Autoclaved vegetables possess tissue-mimicking stiffness and topology, and bring biochemical benefits, operational ease, cost reduction and bioreactor compatibility. Without needing decellularization, these natural biomaterials may see scale-up applications in meat analog bio-fabrication.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85213973324&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-024-55048-6
DO - 10.1038/s41467-024-55048-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85213973324
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 16
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 161
ER -