A New Approach to the Production of Cultured Meat with Enhanced Texture

This project will investigate the production of aligned extracellular matrix within self-releasing tissue produced from myoblasts. This will use peptide amphiphile coatings on aligned templates in cell culture plates. The peptide amphiphiles stimulate cell adhesion and facilitate release of tissue using cell-expressed matrix metalloproteases (MMPs). The alignment template is a micropatterned Teflon substrate. This is prepared by a controlled rubbing process which leads to the production of microgrooves in the substrates. This templates the alignment of extracellular matrix produced by cells including collagen and other extracellular matrix proteins. The project involves the use of commercially available mouse myoblast cell lines for this initial work before extending the research to porcine cell lines. You will culture cells and examine the extracellular matrix produced using histochemical assays of extracellular matrix components, along with morphology and property studies and meat texture analysis, at the University of Reading. The project work at Aberystwyth will utilise the knowledge and expertise within the UK small company Cellular Agriculture's currently funded research projects at Aberystwyth and Bath on myoblast muscle cell sources and bioreactor designs to test the aligned extracellular matrix