Discoveries

April 03, 2023

The Resurrection

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An Australia-based meat company recently unveiled a meatball made from the flesh of the woolly mammoth, the Guardian reported.

Last week, visitors at the Nemo science museum in the Netherlands got to see – but not taste – a food product from the long-extinct creature that early humans would hunt tens of thousands of years ago.

Vow, a cultivated meat firm, said their product was part of a project to underscore the benefits of lab-grown meat, but would also highlight the impact of large-scale livestock production on wildlife and the climate.

“We chose the woolly mammoth because it’s a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change,” said Tim Noakesmith, a co-founder of Vow.

The company and researchers that created the unique meatball explained that its production was “ridiculously easy and fast.”

Scientists developed the mammoth’s myoglobin – a muscle protein that gives meat its flavor – and filled in the missing sequences using elephant DNA. They then placed this sequence in sheep stem cells which replicated into billions of cells subsequently used by Vow to grow the mammoth meat.

The meatball is not yet available for consumption.

“We haven’t seen this protein for thousands of years,” said researcher Ernst Wolvetang, who helped create the mammoth meatball. “So we have no idea how our immune system would react when we eat it.”

Even so, Vow and other organizations promoting cultivated meat products hope that the project will spark discussions about the sustainable potential of cultivated meat.

This story originally appeared in the April 03, 2023 newsletter, Waterfront Property.