Fabrication of cell cultured meat by hydrogel with topographic microstructures

Cell cultured meat (CCM) is an innovative food in cellular agriculture derived from culturing cells in vitro rather than slaughtering livestock. Currently, the fabrications of hydrogel for CCM applications are limited in the foodgrade material, cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation capacities. Thus, an edible collagen hydrogel with linearly aligned microgrooves was fabricated to direct muscle stem cells (MSCs) alignment. In proliferation, more than 65% MSCs were parallel to the topographic microstructures of the hydrogel. Furtherly, the results demonstrated that by benefiting from the well-aligned microgrooves and sufficient cell cultivation, MSCs could differentiate into longer myotubes, with higher expression of related differentiation genes (myosin heavy chain, MyHC-2a and MyHC-slow) and protein (MyHC) than flat hydrogel surface on day 9. Moreover, the types and content of amino acids in natural pork and CCM were also assessed. The amino acids types were consistent while the amino acid content of pork (21.89%) were significantly higher than CCM (11.24%), the gap affirming that some quality characteristics can be facilitated to imitate traditional meat by designing hydrogels in future production. These findings indicate excellent application prospects of the hydrogel with topographic microstructures in CCM.